Brentwood Community Health Care Assessment

Background: The Community Alliance for Research Empowering Social Change (CARES) is an academic–community research partnership designed to train community members on research methods and develop the infrastructure for community-based participatory research (CBPR) to examine and address racial/ethnic health disparities. The Brentwood Community Health Assessment (BCHA) was developed through a CBPR pilot project grant from CARES.

Objectives: The purpose of the BCHA is to assess health care utilization and identify existing barriers to health care access among a multi-ethnic community in the Hamlet of Brentwood, New York.

Methods: Using CBPR approaches, the community–academic research partnership develop the study design and survey instrument. Trained Bilingual (English/Spanish) data collectors verbally administered surveys door-to-door to residents of Brentwood from October 2010 to May 2011. Inclusion criteria required participants to be at least 18 years of age and speak either English or Spanish.

Results: Overall, 232 residents completed the BCHA; 49% were male, 66% Hispanic, 13% non-Hispanic White, 13% non-Hispanic Black, 29% had less than a high school education, and 33% were born in United States. The assessment results revealed that most residents are able to access health care when needed and the most significant barriers to health care access are insurance and cost.

Conclusions: We describe the community–academic partnered process used to develop and implement the BCHA and report assessment findings; the community-partnered approach improved data collection and allowed access into one of Suffolk County’s most vulnerable communities.