HEALTH EQUITY
Connecting communities of color with primary and preventive care with the goal of
creating health equity in Cleveland.
ACTIVE CAMPAIGNS
Color of Health
When COVID-19 hit, it was the perfect storm — a virus no one had seen before attacking communities with drastically higher rates of chronic disease and little to no access to health care.
Healthy Blocks Initiative
Living near world-class healthcare doesn’t guarantee access to it. Despite their proximity to the Cleveland Clinic, the Lee-Harvard, Mount Pleasant, Slavic Village, and Fairfax/Central neighborhoods face some of Cleveland’s highest rates of chronic disease, housing insecurity, and reduced life expectancy.
Through GCC’s Healthy Blocks Initiative, we’re bringing health equity to these historically disinvested communities. Backed by a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Voices for Health grant and partnerships with Western Reserve Land Conservancy, Cumberland Development, CAPGI, Modern Day Health Care, and The Centers for Children and Family, we’re creating five nurse practitioner-led primary care practices, with the first expected to open in Lee-Harvard in 2027.
Healthy Blocks is about more than healthcare. It’s about building neighborhoods where seniors can age in place, local residents can train for healthcare careers, and communities can thrive. Despite political headwinds, we’re moving forward with urgency, strong partnerships, and innovative funding to make that vision a reality.
Community Health Connectors
A vital part of our Healthy Blocks Initiative, GCC is proud to launch our new Health Connector program that hires and trains local residents, mostly young people, to serve as health connectors and community organizers.
Once trained, Community Health Connectors live in the neighborhoods they serve, and they play a vital role in bridging the gap between residents and local healthcare providers — checking in with those who need care and ensuring their medical needs are met.
Health Connectors are trained not only in health navigation, but in the fundamentals of community organizing as well. They are equipped to identify deeper systemic issues that affect health — housing instability, lack of transportation, food insecurity — and to help community members advocate for the resources they deserve.
This work is being made possible through a 2.5-year Voices for Health grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which will fund a pilot program in one neighborhood. The long-term goal is to integrate Health Connectors into new locations across the region, embedding organizing and health access into the core of community care.
By investing in people who already know their neighborhoods and training them as agents of change, GCC is building a model of care that’s relational, responsive, and rooted in the community.
A healthier, happier, brighter future for all of us.
That’s why GCC created the Color of Health initiative. We recruited 17 Cleveland East Side congregations to serve as sites for free COVID testing. And we provided 3,880 vaccines to Cleveland residents who otherwise would’ve gone unvaccinated.
COVID might be in the rearview mirror, but the fight for health equity is far from over. We’re now shifting our focus and working with local providers to connect communities of color with primary and preventive care. The goal is greater access to health care and a healthier, happier, brighter future for all of us.
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legacy CAMPAIGNS
SEE OUR OTHER focus areas
VOTer
engagement
Fighting voter suppression, depression and regression by mobilizing people to vote in low-propensity voting neighborhoods.
Criminal
Justice
Working with prosecutors, judges and our community to create a new system of criminal justice by adding pretrial services and putting an end to cash bail and discretionary youth bindover.
health
equity
Connecting communities of color with primary and preventative care with the goal of creating health equity in Cleveland.
GUN
SAFETY
Reducing gun violence through responsible gun ownership.
ECONOMIC
DEMOCRACY
Our PowerUp congregations are using their collective spending power to negotiate better prices for waste hauling, electricity and natural gas.