For a decade, Columbia Center for Community Health's Institute for Training, Outreach and Community Health (InTOuCH) program has been championing community-centered care, training individuals to lead health screenings, provide referrals and serve as trusted advocates for their neighbors.
Ten years and 21 cohorts later, more than 320 community health workers have come through the InTOuCH program and gone on to work in hospitals, state government, research labs and even their own churches, according to Columbia Neighbors. Some 100,000 New Yorkers have been touched by their outreach.
In a Columbia Neighbors interview, Dr. Janhavi Mallaiah, who has led Columbia's community health worker training program since its founding, discusses the origin story of the InTOuCH program, the essentiality of community health workers in local neighborhoods, and what the next chapter for the program looks like.
The program's milestone comes as Columbia affiliates and neighbors gathered on Sept. 19 for the 15th Annual Morningside Lights parade. The luminous procession, themed "A Common Thread," featured lanterns designed to celebrate the common thread that connects the human fabric across our rich and varied differences, with photo credit to Cherylynn Tsushima/Miller Theatre.
In other Columbia news, the ColumbiaDoctors Primary Care Nurse Practitioner Group (NPG) is marking 10 years in Washington Heights. Since its inception in 2016, the group has been leading transformative health care initiatives in the neighborhood, from being the first location in Upper Manhattan to offer a full range of primary care services for sexual and gender minority individuals to ensuring mental health care is accessible.
The Bronx, meanwhile, is now home to the nation's first hip-hop-inspired public school. The Bronx School of Hip-Hop, co-founded by Christopher Emdin, the Teachers College Maxine Greene Chair for Distinguished Contributions to Education, opened its doors to nearly 100 ninth-graders this month, offering a curriculum that sits at the intersection of culturally rooted teaching and reality pedagogy.
Upcoming Columbia events include a conversation with Academy Award-winning costume designer Paul Tazewell and media maven Harriette Cole at The Malt House on Thursday, Sept. 24, and a screening of the documentary "Once Upon a Time in Harlem" at the Lenfest Center for the Arts on Oct. 13, followed by a discussion with filmmakers David Greaves and Liani Greaves.