Closing Health Inequities in Brooklyn & Beyond

Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.

On December 3, 1992, two months before his death, Arthur Ashe announced the creation of the Arthur Ashe Institute for Urban Health (AAIUH) in response to concerns about the disproportionate amount of illness and death from preventable diseases in our nation’s communities of color.

The Arthur Ashe Institute for Urban Health was developed to promote health equity in New York City.

• Black New Yorkers have the lowest life expectancy, while white New Yorkers have the highest.   ¹  
• Chronic exposure to stressors related to structural racism causes significant mental and physical health deterioration.   ²  
• New York State's health care workforce lacks diversity; for example, only 12% of physicians identify as Black or Latinx.   ³  

We utilize a model of community health empowerment and engagement to promote health equity and social justice.

Our model is based on four vision pillars that include developing innovative community-based health promotion & research programs, promoting a more diverse and inclusive workforce of health professionals, creating strategic partnerships, and informing and guiding policy.

Using an evidence-based approach, we implement our programs in communities of color with the highest rates of preventable diseases, such as Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brownsville, Crown Heights, East New York, and Flatbush.

🔎 Interact with the maps to get more information about communities and programs

We develop and implement innovative community health empowerment programs. We help our community partners address chronic health conditions and advocate for their health by providing health education and advocacy programming within nontraditional venues (e.g., barbershops and hair salons).

We reach approximately 3,000 community members annually to prevent chronic diseases that disproportionately affect low-income communities of color, including HIV/AIDS, cardiovascular disease, asthma, diabetes, and cancer.

There is a systemic lack of diversity in the health sector. Our research has shown that the problem starts early with K-12 students experiencing  more barriers to entering the health profession .

Compared to their overall representation in the workforce (represented by the orange dotted line), Black and Latinx people are underrepresented in the US health care workforce.   ⁸  

The HSA is a STEM health science enrichment pipeline program that prepares students in grades 6-12 to succeed in college health science courses and pursue a profession in the health sector.

AAIUH’s Health Science Academy is one of the first out-of-school educational programs accredited by Middle States Association Commissions on Elementary and Secondary Schools (MSA-CESS)! The accreditation recognizes the rigor of the HSA program and its ability to broaden students’ participation in STEM.

Achieving the goal of health equity requires strategic partnerships. It's for this reason that the AAIUH has established strong partnerships with a wide array of stakeholders including, barbershops, salons, faith-based institutions, community-based organizations, academic institutions, hospitals/healthcare systems, and government agencies.

Led by the Arthur Ashe Institute for Urban Heath, Communities Together for Heath Equity (CTHE), is a diverse and representative group of over 70 community-based organizations (CBOs) and stakeholders working to ensure comprehensive services that address the spectrum of social determinant of health (SDOH) for over 350,000 community members citywide.

CTHE's mission is to establish a sustainable model of community engagement to ensure that community voices are heard, wellness goals are identified, and CBO engagement takes place within a transformed healthcare system, grounded in a shared health equity agenda.

🔎 Click the points or logos in the map below to learn about CTHE's members!

We promote policies that have the potential to transform New York City's healthcare system from one that is profit-centered to one that is patient-centered.

For too long New York has spent more on medical care than any other State, without improving wellness in high need, low- income communities.

A big part of this failure was the lack of involvement from Community-Based Organizations (CBOs), which play a critical role in bridging the gap between community needs and healthcare planning at the local and state levels.

Through the formation of Communities Together for Health Equity, a diverse citywide network of CBOs, the Arthur Ashe Institute for Urban Health led a successful campaign to ensure CBOs serve as active participants in the healthcare planning and delivery process, shaping future healthcare transformation policies.

1.  NYC Department of Health, Summary of Vital Statistics for 2021 
2.  Williams, D. and Mohammed, S., 2012 
3.  New York Governor Press Office, 2023 
4.  NYC DOHMH,  Bureau of Vital Statistics, 2015-2019
5.  NYC DOHMH,  Community Health Survey, 2019-2020
6.  APA 2024 
7.  Hostetter, J., Schwarz et al, 2020 
8.  Salsberg et al, 2021