A Partner for the Community

Urban Health Institute

How can you topple the “town and gown” barriers that separate an elite medical and research institution from a neighboring population of socioeconomically disadvantaged people? Robert Wm. Blum employs a strategy that served him as an international expert in adolescent health: Rely on the people in the community to help find the best solutions.

The Johns Hopkins Urban Health Institute, which Blum directs, serves as a catalyst that brings together Hopkins faculty and students with community organizations to improve health. As it forges alliances with local groups, the Institute also awards small grants that support faculty and students who work with those organizations on research and programs related to health and well-being. And 30 community health workers from the Institute have conducted health screenings, provided patients with lifestyle and health coaching, and coordinated the care of more than 7,000 residents of East Baltimore.

“Together we can make Baltimore a learning community—not a ‘laboratory’ where students or faculty go out and do things to the community, but a place where there really are true partnerships, where the urban health curriculum we are developing really represents the breadth of thinking that exists across this University and the community,” says Blum, the William H. Gates Sr. Professor and Chair of the Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health. “People in the community are so willing to say, ‘Let’s sit down together and see if we can’t figure out how to do it better.’”