FSOS alumni coordinates effort to improve healthcare access for underserved

Dan-neya Yancey, a 2020 graduate in Family Social Science, is working to improve access to health services to residents of Brooklyn Center and Brooklyn Park who have traditionally been underserved, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Yancey is the program coordinator for a Brooklyn Bridge Alliance for Youth pilot collaboration with the Cities of Brooklyn Center and Brooklyn Park, Hennepin County Public Health, and Community Health Workers. The initiative, Health on the Go! (HOTG), is a mobile unit that will travel throughout both Brooklyn Park and Brooklyn Center to bring health services and health resources to where residents live and worship.

The Alliance convened a group of community and governmental partners to explore the feasibility of a mobile community health model as a new approach to public health in the suburban context. The HOTG intends to connect resources that address socioeconomic, physical environment, health, and health care barriers to well-being, as well as longstanding inequities in health systems, in the Black, Indigenous, people of color (BIPOC and/or low wealth individuals) communities. These communities have also been disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

HOTG partners also include African Career, Education and Resource (ACER), the Health Resource Center at Brooklyn Center Community Schools, and the Northwest Hennepin Family Service Collaborative (NWHFSC).

Planning began in September of 2020 and partners held their first event in December 2020.

“Through this new way of working, we intend to understand how to center our communities of color and leverage community partnerships to do so,” says Yancey. “We are in this together!”

A 2020 graduate of FSOS, Yancey was also the CEHD student commencement speaker and was honored with a University of Minnesota President’s Student Leadership and Service Award. She has been working at BBAY since last summer. Previously she was an FSOS Financial Literacy Peer Coach and Lead Peer Mentor of the President’s Emerging Scholars Program, both at the University of Minnesota.

More about the Brooklyn Bridge Alliance for Youth

The Brooklyn Bridge Alliance for Youth brings community resources together so young people have more opportunities to help them succeed and become thriving adults. It’s a partnership among the cities of Brooklyn Park and Brooklyn Center, Hennepin County, North Hennepin Community College, Hennepin Technical College, and Anoka-Hennepin, Brooklyn Center, Osseo and Robbinsdale school districts.