The W.K. Kellogg Foundation's Community Voices: Healthcare for the Underserved initiative is a group of community-based demonstration projects launched in 1998 to combat barriers to care and dedicated to finding real-life ways to provide greater access to quality health care to the underserved and uninsured people in America.
Despite shrinking budgets, rising costs, and bureaucratic red tape, Community Voices programs are influencing the policy debate within their states. Community Voices: Health Matters chronicles the remarkable accomplishments of eight Community Voices "learning laboratories" that took on the challenge of improving and assuring health care for the underserved in their communities.
Community Voices offers a compilation of the innovative health care concepts and programs implemented within these eight communities that are making inroads to creating a policy blueprint for the nation.
Community Voices offers a realistic design for ensuring well-being for the millions of health care-challenged citizens in our nation.
About the Author: Henrie M. Treadwell, PhD, is director and senior social scientist for Community Voices and a research professor in the Department of Community Health and Preventive Medicine at Morehouse School of Medicine. She serves on the board of the Georgia Department of Corrections and on the editorial board of the International Journal of Men's Health where she is section editor for contributions on the social determinants of health. Previously, she was employed for 17 years as a program director at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
Marguerite J. Ro, DrPH, is deputy director of the Asian and Pacific Islander American Health
Forum (APIAHF), a national health policy organization dedicated to strengthening policies, programs, and research to improve the health and well-being of Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders. Formerly she was assistant professor in the College of Dental Medicine of the Mailman School of Public Health and the Center for Community Health Partnerships at Columbia University.
Leda M. Perez, PhD, is vice president of Health Initiatives at the Collins Center for Public Policy. She directed Community Voices Miami from 1999-2009, first at Camillus House, a not-for-profit organization devoted to providing support and services for homeless and other vulnerable populations, and later at the Collins Center.
