Boston's Codman Square Community Partnership for Health Promotion

The Codman Square Community Partnership for Health Promotion is a program designed to promote changes in individual behavior and community relationships to reduce the morbidity and mortality associated with the many problems affecting poor, minority communities in the United States. Problems of particular concern to be addressed by the program include violence, injuries, substance abuse, acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), infant mortality, child abuse and neglect, and cardiovascular disease. The failure of traditional health promotion approaches to poor communities has created a literature supporting community-based action directed at broad social forces. The Codman Square Community Partnership for Health Promotion uses a variety of models--community participation, community organization, empowerment education, and community-oriented primary care--to encourage new coalitions that can ameliorate the social isolation and health-averse social norms linked to poverty and poor health. The program uses local residents trained as lay health workers to deliver home-based health services and to help create the necessary partnerships, linkages, and communication networks to foster the reorganization of the community to better address its health problems.