Grant Enables Duke To Add Health Care To Neighborhood Partnership Initiative Programs
DURHAM, N.C. - A grant from The Duke Endowment to support programs serving residents of low-income neighborhoods near Duke University will allow Duke to expand an innovative community health care program to patients in the Walltown and West End neighborhoods.
The $698,000 grant to the Duke-Durham Neighborhood Partnership Initiative (NPI), the largest grant the Endowment's Children and Families Initiative has made, also includes continued funding for affordable housing initiatives in Walltown, as well as teen mentoring and youth programming in the West End. In addition, it makes possible a new job-training program.
"We have already funded Promising Practices for several years through grants to Duke University Medical Center, so we know it is a good program and we want to see it expand to other parts of Durham," said Elizabeth H. Locke, president of The Duke Endowment. "Promising Practices did not cover the neighborhoods in the Duke-Durham Neighborhood Partnership Initiative. Now it can."
The NPI was developed to improve the quality of life in 12 neighborhoods surrounding campus and their seven public schools by improving student achievement, combating crime, increasing home ownership and providing opportunities for local youth and teens. The new grant brings support from the Charlotte-based charitable trust for residents of neighborhoods in the NPI to $1.9 million over the past five years.
"We are so appreciative that The Duke Endowment is reinvesting in our efforts in Durham," said Michael Palmer, director of Duke's Office of Community Affairs, which administers the partnership. "It has gone beyond the traditional role of a foundation, which often stays with a program for three years and then moves on. The new Promising Practices component, in particular, allows us to expand and to address the very important issue of health care for our most vulnerable populations. We know that diseases such as diabetes are killing people in these neighborhoods."
Promising Practices is a major community health initiative developed by the Duke medical center's Office of the Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs, Duke School of Nursing, the Department of Community and Family Medicine, Durham Regional Hospital, Lincoln Community Health Center, the Durham County Department of Social Services and the Durham County Health Department. Launched in February 2000 with significant funding support from The Duke Endowment, it serves residents in Northeast Central Durham neighborhoods who suffer from diabetes, asthma and hypertension.
The goal is to help teach patients to better manage their diseases, reducing the need for frequent hospital trips. Program clinicians - including practitioners under physician supervision, a screening coordinator, a health educator and a nutritionist - deliver health care in patients' homes each day without charge. The Duke Endowment grant will expand the program to residents in NPI partner neighborhoods such as Walltown and West End and permit other health care initiatives with Duke medical and nursing students.
The Duke Endowment grant also will support the ongoing affordable housing initiatives of Duke partners, such as the Self-Help Credit Union, in the Walltown community. The nonprofit will receive $175,00 to continue renovating housing, creating opportunities for home ownership and promoting community development to support its collaborative revitalization work in Walltown, a low-income, historically African-American neighborhood near East Campus. With help from $2 million of affordable housing loans from Duke, Self-Help has rebuilt 42 houses and sold 39 of them to low-income, first-time buyers.
In addition, Duke has provided funding and worked with Self-Help and local churches to turn the old Walltown Elementary School into the St. James Family Life Center, and the old grocery store on Knox Street, formerly a crime and drug magnet, into headquarters for the Walltown Neighborhood Ministries, a collaboration between neighborhood churches and the Duke Divinity School.
Duke's work with Walltown through the NPI was recognized in 2001 with a gold medal award for community-university partnerships by the Washington, D.C.-based Council for Advancement and Support of Education.
Two teen programs in West End - Teen Focus and Partners for Youth - also will receive funding in the latest grant. The Teen Focus program, offered by the Joseph Alston and Juanita McNeil West End Teen Center, which was purchased and renovated with Duke's support, provides alternatives for West End youths at risk of long-term and short-term suspension, dropping out of school and teen pregnancy. The program, which will receive $60,000, provides a structured after-school program for between 20-30 neighborhood youngsters, grades 6-11, five evenings a week.
Partners for Youth, an award-winning mentoring and job skills program started in 1997 to improve the lives of at-risk teens from Southwest Central Durham, will receive $30,000. Twenty-four teens identified by the community have received support from a variety of organizations and mentors for their educational and personal growth. Partners for Youth's first cohort started college in fall 2001.
Ingrid Hester, 16, who attends Jordan High and plans to go to college, said Partners for Youth "inspired me to do better in school and further myself in life. I used to do OK in school, but now I do better because I feel like someone really cares."
Another new program that received funding this year is designed to help hard-to-place Durham residents find jobs and identify necessary skills needed to acquire them. "Visions for Tomorrow," based at the St. James Community Life Center in Walltown, offers an eight-week program involving partners such as Northgate Mall and the Junior League of Durham and Orange Counties, whose professional members volunteer their expertise on resume-writing.
"We are targeting people who have had problems finding jobs or keeping them because of their past lifestyles," said Kimberly Brooks, program director of Visions for Tomorrow. "We want them to look to the future to jobs where they can grow and increase their skills."
"The Duke Endowment should be congratulated for providing this level of funding," added Durham Mayor William Bell, who helped provide community input in the design of the NPI in 1996. "The Neighborhood Partnership Initiative in Durham is further strengthened by that kind of support coming to the community. Having been involved early on in Duke's creation of the NPI, I know the benefits that it offers Durham."
The Duke Endowment, established in 1924 by industrialist, philanthropist and Duke University founder James B. Duke, is one of the nation's largest foundations. Its mission is to serve the people of North Carolina and South Carolina by supporting selected programs of higher education, health care, children's welfare and spiritual life. In 2000, The Duke Endowment awarded grants of almost $100 million, including more than $32 million to Duke University.