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Minority health initiatives urge paid media, trusted messengers and capacity building to reach vulnerable residents
Summary
Representatives from the African American Health Program, Alcohol & Other Drug Addiction Advisory Council, Asian American Health Initiative and Latino Health Initiative told the Health & Human Services Committee they need sustained funding for outreach, culturally competent services, website/data platforms and flexibility to respond to rising needs in immigrant and low-income communities.
Three county minority health initiatives, plus addiction and victim-services advisory representatives, told Montgomery County’s Health and Human Services Committee that stronger outreach—using paid media, trusted messengers, multilingual platforms and capacity-building for community organizations—is essential to reach residents amid conflicting federal messaging and rising need.
Jacqueline Williams, co-chair of the African American Health Program, urged renewed investment in vaccine and influenza outreach and culturally competent mental-health programs, noting past COVID outreach success and concern about new surges. "We want to avoid a repeat of the pandemic, which showed that black communities were disproportionately affected," Williams said.
AODAC Chair Laura Mitchell asked the county to remove stigmatizing language from forms and code, rebuild council membership (AODAC currently lacks quorum), and expand outreach, Narcan distribution and reentry coordination strategies.
A representative of the Asian American Health Initiative (identified in the record as Doctor Huang) recommended a data platform to collect, analyze and share AAPI community information to improve behavioral-health and senior-wellness outreach across 15+ languages. The Latino Health Initiative urged flexibility—similar to COVID-era emergency authority—to reallocate resources quickly as needs spike among immigrant and service-economy households.
Panels recommended combining county media offices, Montgomery County Media and minority health initiatives to produce brief promotional videos and strengthen community websites and social-media efforts tailored by language and culture. Committee members asked HHS and county media to explore pilot paid-media efforts and technical support to help community organizations run multilingual Zoom/virtual outreach and physician Q&A forums.
Provenance: testimony came from AAHP (Jacqueline Williams), AODAC (Laura Mitchell), AAHI (Doctor Huang) and LHI (Rudy Buro) during the morning panel and subsequent discussion.
