CARE: Community Alliance for Research and Engagement
Since its founding in 2007 at the Yale School of Public Health, the Community Alliance for Research and Engagement (CARE) has worked to identify solutions to health challenges such as diabetes, asthma, and heart and lung diseases through community-based research and projects focusing on social, environmental, and behavioral risk factors. In the fall of 2016, The Community Alliance for Research and Engagement (CARE) began a partnership with Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU) to enhance its ongoing efforts to improve the health of residents in New Haven’s lowest-income neighborhoods.
CARE is co-housed at SCSU’s School of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Yale School of Public Health. CARE fosters student service learning, advances community-engaged scholarship, and works closely with community partners.
Two key elements distinguish CARE’s mission as it develops relationships in the YALE and SCSU communities as well as the larger New Haven and Connecticut communities: the drive to better serve students and the commitment to social justice. These are simultaneously familiar and fresh perspectives from which CARE can refine our focus on improving health in the New Haven community.
CARE will continue to leverage the potential of student, faculty, and staff power, combined with the legacy of work initiated over the past decade at the Yale School of Public Health, in a new way that will hopefully have a lasting impact for another decade to come.
Accomplishments
The mission of the Community Alliance for Research & Engagement (CARE) at both Southern Connecticut State University and the Yale School of Public Health is to improve health in New Haven. CARE was established in 2007 to identify solutions to health challenges through community action research. CARE promotes the prevention of chronic disease by focusing on social, environmental, and behavioral risk factors. For over ten years, CARE has collaborated with residents from six low-income neighborhoods; students, teachers, and staff from 12 New Haven Public Schools; and with numerous community partners across the city to create change in the places where we live, work, and play. In this collaborative work, CARE is proud to contribute toward important initiatives – while tracking influential changes in our community’s health.