GROUPS AND PROGRAMS
(Nearly all group and program services available in Spanish and English.)

For DIABETES Programs Click Here

Health People is now the central community agency for a major consortium, the SOUTH BRONX DIABETES AND HEART DISEASE COALITION, which is undertaking groundbreaking projects to combat the Bronx’s high rate of diabetes and diabetes complications. After organizing a groundbreaking walk, which had the 161 Street Greenmarket as its destination, the COALTION, which includes more than 40 community agencies, is now developing key community-wide strategies to promote both better nutrition and walking and other easy exercise.

Watch our website for updates on these community activities!

Meanwhile, in partnership with the Bronx Defeat Diabetes Project, with the Bronx Community Health Network as lead agency, we are training peer educators for 7 community health clinics and then working with these clinics and other community groups to screen a minimum of 2,000 Bronx residents annually and enroll 500 new diabetics annually into proper medical care in the Bronx.

And, as partners in the Albert Einstein College of Medicine Bronx Center to reduce Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities (Bronx CREED project), we have trained diabetes peer educators who are holding six-session family groups to help both diabetics and their loved ones understand good nutrition and self-care for diabetes (which, of course, also promotes well-being for the other family members.) These diabetes peers also do constant educational outreach to alert a community where 40% of people have either diabetes or high blood sugar to need both for diabetes testing and good nutrition and exercise.

Diabetes and Heart Disease Prevention:

PEER TRAINING – Eight-week peer training class on the prevention and management of diabetes and heart disease.

FAMILY DIABETES SUPPORT GROUP – Six-week support group focused on education, prevention and disease management.

For further information on our Diabetes and Heart Disease Prevention programs, call Michael Goodhope at 718-585-8585 ext. 228.

HIV/AIDS

For HIV/ AIDS Programs Click Here

The bad news about AIDS is real… it is now the largest killer of women of childbearing age… families are crushed and children orphaned. Yet, Health People has never accepted this bad news as the way it has be. We know that our prevention programs are saving the lives of women and men today… preventing even greater numbers of children from being orphaned tomorrow. And we know that our sensitive community-based support helps hundreds of distraught parents deal with seemingly hopeless situations so that their children have a secure future.

How does a small AIDS program in the South Bronx become a recognized international and citywide leader in AIDS prevention for women, offering support for AIDS-affected families, helping children orphaned by AIDS, and assisting the homeless, drug users, and other neglected populations?

From its founding in 1990, Health People has insisted there is one successful way for AIDS prevention and support in poor communities… training HIV-positive and HIV-affected community members to become the leaders and educators in the fight against AIDS. Our unique three-month training course for peer educators produces outstanding, effective educators.

Health People Women Blaze a Trail: For its first three years Health People was a women’s program. Blazing a trail in community AIDS education, the knowledgeable, dedicated Health People women created a program that everyone wanted to join. Now, we are a multi-faceted program for men, families, children, and teenagers who-at every level-promote community training and empowerment to fight AIDS.

Serving Where the Need Is: Health People takes successful AIDS prevention and support to a variety of settings- neighborhood centers, drug clinics, and schools. Our women’s AIDS prevention program has significantly reduced risks among low-income Hispanic and African-American women. We serve all "risk" groups-heterosexual and gay, many ethnic groups, and have special programs for some of New York’s truly underserved populations, including Spanish-speaking immigrants and homeless people with AIDS.

Helping Shattered Families… and Kids: For the Health People Family Program, the greatest challenges of AIDS are an everyday mission. In special support groups, HIV-positive mothers and fathers received constant help and understanding so that they can better deal with the family strain caused by AIDS. Hundreds of parents who have taken Health People’s unique Parenting Course for parents with AIDS have learned to protect their children’s future by taking the proper legal steps now to assure that there will be a home waiting for their kids when they can no longer care for them.

In a Community where thousands of children and teenagers are being orphaned by AIDS, helping kids is a priority! Health people volunteers therefore started a groundbreaking mentoring program for children from HIV-affected families. Kids, ranging in age from 5 to 17 years old, go on recreational and cultural outings. Most of all, they get to know other loving adults—people who will be in their lives to stand by them through a parent’s illness or death.

Children & Teens: As Health People helped greater numbers of people, we learned that severe illness often affects the whole family. Children, in particular, can be harmed if their parents become overwhelmed with the realities of a debilitating and life-threatening disease.

For more MENTORING Program Information Click Here

To help kids cope, we’ve added the Adolescent Peer Mentoring Program: Kids Helping Kids. This program is designed to help kids as young as 6 and as old as 20 to understand how best to cope with their parent’s illnesses. The kids also learn how to protect themselves and other kids from HIV infection, to make good eating and exercise not just part of their life, but something they teach other kids about, and how to stay free of dangerous behaviors i.e. drugs and risky sexual activity.

The mentoring program also includes cultural and recreational outings and family events.

Our work follows our belief that children helping each other is the best form of intervention to interrupt the cycle of poverty, drugs, early sexual activity, pregnancies, and school failure. We train older teenagers to become leader in their community and serve as mentor for younger children whose parents are ill. Many people have recognized our work. In 1999, the Health People Mentoring Program was named one of 16 Model Mentoring Programs by the National Mentoring Partnership. The Program Coordinator who helped start the program received a Mayor’s Award as the City’s Outstanding Volunteer of the Year. Under funding from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development through the National Development and Research Institute our theory that Kids helping Kids effects positive change for individuals, and, in the community at large is being well evaluated.

Other Kids Programs Include:

• KIDZ Commission on AIDS
• Summer Employment Program
• Summer Day Program
• Adolescent Mentoring (on Saturdays)
• Teen Peer Training

If you want further information, call Michael Goodhope at 718-585-8585 ext. 228.

Childhood asthma has a major impact on children and their families and is costly in terms of emergency room visits and missed school days. Our Asthma Peer Educators go into schools, daycare centers, community centers, and private homes to instruct children and parents in how to better manage asthma and also conduct home visits where they do environmental assessments to help eliminate elements that can act as triggers for asthma attacks. Outside evaluation shows that children in this community case management reduced their lost school days by 60% and their emergency room visit by 50%.

Peer Educator Peer Training:

Eight- to twelve-week training class for community residents who wish to become Asthma peer educators.

For information about asthma services, call Juanita Lopez at 718-585-8585 ext. 231.

Funded by the M.A.C. AIDS Fund, the Health People Women’s Early Intervention and Empowerment Initiative, first proposes to fight the excess deaths, morbidity and overall isolation of Bronx women with HIV/AIDS by a peer educator-driven early intervention, care access and maintenance program. The program is designed to reach, enter and stabilize in care the highest need women with HIV/AIDS, as well as provide on-site HIV testing at places very accessible to high risk women.

Peer Training:

Able to commit to 3 weeks of training.
Able to commit to 3 to 6 months of internship after training.

For information about this program, call Juanita Lopez at 718-585-8585 ext. 231.