As part of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) funded Educate, Test and Navigate and Safer Haven projects on which they are respectively Principal Investigators, Assistant Professor Lance Keene and Associate Professor Jennifer Manuel launched the Bronx Family Coalition for Health (BFC4H) in July 2021. Developed and run in partnership with the Adolescent AIDS Program at Montefiore Medical Center, BFC4H operates on the ground in the South Bronx, supporting the health and well-being of the community’s youth and working with families to prevent underage drinking, substance use, unplanned pregnancy, and sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Program Manager R. Yamir Gomez Carrasco, Project Coordinator Javier Martinez, and Research Assistant Khadija Israel, an NYU Silver PhD student, are among the seven member team working with Drs. Keene and Manuel to implement and evaluate BFC4H and the projects with which it is associated.
The South Bronx is the nation’s poorest Congressional district and is a hotspot for HIV and other STIs, unplanned pregnancy, underage drinking, and opioid use. At the same time, it has considerable strengths including its youth, families, community coalitions, healthcare providers, and social services agencies, all of which Drs. Keene and Manuel are harnessing through BFC4H and their larger projects. “This is definitely community collaborative research,” said Dr. Keene. “We are really tapping into our community partnerships and we are fortunate to have a strong team that has helped us to forge those connections.”
Since its launch, BFC4H has conducted outreach, engagement, and prevention education and training regarding substance use, HIV, and other STIs with more 2,400 individuals living in the South Bronx. In addition, through weekly community health fairs, the coalition has provided on-site HIV testing and navigation to services for those who test positive and/or show indications of high risk sexual behavior or substance use; has distributed free condoms to prevent STIs, test strips to identify the presence of fentanyl in unregulated drugs, and naloxone to reverse opioid overdoses; and has provided accompanying training and education to South Bronx youth and families. The BFC4H team also presents seminars for parents on topics including HIV is transmitted, sexual health, how to identify and reduce adolescent and young adult substance use, etc.
Said Dr. Keene, “We recognize that youth are embedded within families and families are embedded within communities. We also take an intersectional approach to our work. People are multidimensional. When we think about improving health outcomes and life opportunities, we have to think about people’s whole identities and not just their current health status. That’s the philosophy our team uses in its work, and that’s how we show up to our work in the Bronx.”
