HEALTH DISPARITIES

The Sisters of Charity Foundation views health as vital to supporting families, building stable neighborhoods, and reducing poverty. The Foundation seeks to improve our community’s capacity to eliminate health disparities, those health outcomes that are significantly worse for vulnerable populations.

Health disparities result from multiple socio-economic and environmental conditions, including housing, income and job stability, education, and personal behaviors. Aiming at a significant contributor to health disparities, the Foundation commenced an initiative in 2007 to improve health literacy in Cuyahoga County.

Health literacy encompasses an individual’s ability to find, understand, evaluate, and use health information to engage the services needed to make appropriate health decisions and navigate the health care system.

The Foundation is also cultivating strategies designed to reduce health disparities in the Central Neighborhood of Cleveland, which is experiencing serious challenges such as a high number of uninsured and incidence of chronic disease.

In keeping with our guiding principles of advocacy and empowerment, the Foundation supports health policy organizations as they pursue objectives of promoting or improving government policies that may reduce health disparities.