Health Issues of the West Ward, Newark NJ

The Chapter’s Community Planning Assistance Program was invited by Babyland Family Services in Newark’s West Ward to build upon its social service programs to address the growing healthcare disparities and substandard living conditions for families in the West Ward. Babyland Family Services is a not-for-profit, comprehensive family service organization providing programs and resources to families living in and around the lower West Ward of Newark, New Jersey. For more than forty-five years, Babyland has provided a wide array of social services, including one of the first domestic violence shelters in Essex County and a unique foster care program specializing in keeping siblings together. Today, Babyland provides high-quality, affordable childcare and family development programs, including a Family Success Center, parent education classes, supervised visitation for children in the child welfare system and a family violence intervention program.

Babyland’s community health strategy goals are:

  • To improve access to health care for treatment of chronic and acute conditions, most prevalent in the community, such as asthma, and diabetes, heart disease,
  • To increase the community’s awareness of the importance of preventative health care management, and
  • To connecting families with social service supports that can support better family health.

Babyland asked APA-NJ’s Community Planning Assistance Program (CPAP) to:

  • Conduct a needs assessment by collecting from existing sources, and analyzing data on the most pressing health issues facing residents, including health disparities, access to care, insurance coverage and other social determinants that impact health outcomes,
  • Organize and facilitate at least one public meeting to discus health issues with members of the public, and
  • Create an on line survey to support Babyland’s ongoing outreach to the larger community in Newark’s West Ward.

The final product for this work is below. As you will see the team of volunteers was able to finish the work for Babyland, producing quantitative and qualitative data that Babyland will use to further their efforts to identify the most pressing health issues in this community and strategies for addressing them. Thanks to the CPAP team volunteers for their good work.

  • Loretta Kelly – team leader
  • Anisha Anant
  • Lillian Cho
  • Cailean Cok
  • Elizabeth Kulinich