BCHART Educators are Here to Serve our Community

The Coronavirus pandemic has left us with so many questions, but the Colorado Black Health Collaborative (CBHC) hopes to provide you with some much-needed answers. We have partnered with Denver Public Health and other community partners to bring the latest information to Colorado’s Black Community. Whether it’s regarding the safety of the vaccine or where someone can see a provider who looks like them, we are here to support. Our two BCHART (Black Community Health Awareness Response Team) have been trained to help you navigate this pandemic. They will direct you where to get the vaccine and or just be someone for you to talk to since the pandemic has affected us all. Please reach out!

COVID-19 fatigue has affected us all! We all remember where we were on March 11^th, 2020. Some of us were with our families trying to enjoy the last bit of winter before spring came and then some were watching the latest NBA game. March 11^th is a day that will live in infamy for most of us, the last day of “normal” most of us would have for the foreseeable future. For others it was a call for action.

We have a mission at the Colorado Black Health Collaborative to promote health equity in Colorado’s Black community and when we saw that the Black community was only 3% of the population but 7% of the COVID deaths we knew as an organization we had a call to action. The Black community is unique due to the amount of historical trauma we have experienced since the inception of the United States, from the medical knowledge gained from torturing women who were enslaved, to allowing syphilis to go untreated and to even this day getting massacred in cold blood without justice.

Knowing all of these things we decided to use our cultural capital and collaborate with Denver Public Health to address COVID in our way…with the Black Community Health Awareness Response Team or BCHART. BCHART is special because we are able to not only rely on the expertise we have in house to achieve health equity in Colorado’s Black Community but also are able to create new relationships and work on healing past mistrust that has been present between the health system in general.

Our BCHART educators consistently receive the latest, most up to date information related to COVID-19 as well as resources to address the financial burden of COVID-19 as well.

Some of the biggest lessons we have learned as a team are that trusted community partners are necessary to bridge the gap between the health care system and the Black Community. In conjunction with local churches and other trusted organizations we are able to help directly or indirectly get thousands of Black Coloradans vaccinated and dispel a lot of the misinformation surrounding the vaccine. Our BCHART educators have been vital in closing the gap between the ivory tower of research and grassroots efforts. We hope to be able to leverage our strong volunteer corps to continue the push to achieve health equity in Colorado’s Black Community.

Blacks have impact on COVID-19 Johnny Williams, MPH