Community Voice: Taking it to the People

Developed in Lynchburg, VA, in 2000, Community Voice: Taking it to the People is an innovative grassroots initiative that seeks to impact African American infant mortality by training community residents to be lay health advisors. These advisors attend a series of five classes addressing a variety of health concerns, including SIDS, preterm labor, and early prenatal care. Once trained, lay health advisors have the knowledge and power to disseminate correct information and to influence their family and friends. This is an invaluable asset when addressing cultures, practices and beliefs that may be passed down from one generation to the next.

Community Voice participants engage community members and spread positive health education information through Town Hall meetings, churches, civic organizations, community events, and other local venues. The program is structured to be sensitive to the attitudes and beliefs of individuals, recognizing their susceptibility to receive information and their readiness to act or change. The program benefits not only pregnant women and their babies, but also the community at large; this is important since many of the factors that determine birth outcomes are established long before a woman becomes pregnant.

The goal of the program is to decrease African American infant mortality through raising awareness of racial health disparities, encouraging safe and healthy lifestyle practices, and providing correct perinatal health education.

Over the last 12 years, the national program in Lynchburg, VA, has trained not only hundreds of local lay health advisors, but also participants from numerous agencies across the United States, which has led to the implementation of the Community Voice program in:
- West Palm Beach County, Florida
- Memphis, Tennessee
- Nashville, Tennessee
- Jacksonville, Florida
- Fort Lauderdale, Florida
- Danville, Virginia
- Martinsville, Virginia
- Richmond, Virginia
- Henrico County, Virginia
- Chesterfield County, Virginia

Nationwide, Community Voice has trained thousands of community residents to be lay health advisors, thus enabling thousands more to receive correct information on safe sleep, breastfeeding, folic acid, nutrition, substance use, prematurity, prenatal care and other perinatal health topics.

Many regions where the program has been implemented have experienced a decrease in their African American infant death rates.