The Family Wellness Center serves as a community for local families seeking holistic care, support, and opportunities.

Target Market:

The Center serves urban families in the Greater Hartford region including caregivers, children and adolescents, seniors and grandparents, persons with disabilities, and the LGBTQ+ community with a focus on persons of color and communities with limited to no access to wellness services. We provide community resources, holistic wellness services, and direct health services/care coordination. All programming is guided by three underlying principles:

  • Health Equity: Every person can attain his or her full health potential and no one is disadvantaged from achieving this potential because of social position or other socially determined.
  • Community Participation: Through a Community Advisory Committee (CAC) and a community organizing effort services are community driven and evaluated for continuous quality.
  • Trauma-Informed Approach: The Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) approach encompasses six key principles, including safety, trustworthiness and transparency, peer support, collaboration and mutuality, empowerment voice and choice, and cultural, historical and gender.

The services provided at the Center are a unique collaboration between the public, private, and non-profit sectors. Together, these sectors provide comprehensive, community-driven services needed to improve its overall wellbeing.

With a health equity focus and through trauma-informed care, we envision addressing eight principal areas of health: physical, intellectual, occupational, spiritual, social, emotional, financial, and environmental.

Physical:

  • Healthcare Screening: Hartford Healthcare provides medical screening (e.g., blood pressure, blood sugar); vaccinations; immunizations; basic testing (e.g., COVID19, A1C, Cholesterol); addresses urgent needs such as a common cold, earaches, minor burns, and minor lacerations; and provides referral and follow-up care.
  • Oral Health Screening: Oral health screening services are offered by the University of Connecticut School of Dental Medicine and the Connecticut Oral Health Initiative. Under the supervision of attending faculty members, dental student volunteers are available to complete oral health assessments, which consist of reviewing a patient’s medical history, delivering oral hygiene instruction, and conducting an oral screening. Based upon these preliminary findings, referrals for follow-up care are made as deemed necessary.
  • Individual Nutritional Counseling: Hispanic Health Council educates individuals and families about nutrition to make ensure that they are properly managing their health. They offer individual and family dietary counseling, a weight management series, and nutrition classes.
  • Cooking Demonstrations and Nutrition Education: The Hispanic Health Council provides on-site cooking demonstrations as a great way to show off easy and delicious recipes featuring healthy and culturally appropriate foods. In addition, nutritional education learning experiences are designed and provided to facilitate the voluntary adoption of eating and other nutrition-related behaviors conducive to health and well-being.
  • Health Education (e.g., Diabetes Management, Asthma Management): The Hispanic Health Council provides a series of classes designed to help people acquire functional health knowledge, and strengthens attitudes, beliefs, and practice skills needed to adopt and maintain healthy behaviors throughout their lives.
  • Physical Fitness (e.g., Martial Arts, Yoga): Local fitness experts conduct exercise classes such as yoga and martial arts. They are designed to teach people what is required to maintain their physical fitness and how to properly conduct the preferred training program.

Occupational:

  • Occupational Training: Goodwin University provides a manufacturing training center. The center provides students with various opportunities including learning introductory manufacturing skills, along with future job and educational prospects.
  • Media Technology Training: Friends of Pope Park provide basic computer skills. The courses cover the most common usages of a computer, including understanding the basic notions of computer manipulation, managing computer files, word processing, using spreadsheets and databases, creating presentations, finding information and communicating using computers, and being aware of social and ethical implications of Internet use They also provide podcasting and recording training and experiential opportunities.
  • Vocational Rehabilitation Services: Hispanic Health Council provides an individualized employment program. Participants receive an assessment, an individualized rehabilitation program, counseling and guidance, training, job placement, and services to support job retention.

Environmental:

  • Environmental Justice Training: The UConn Hartford County Extension Center provides classes and seminars that are based on the principle that all people have a right to be protected from environmental pollution, and to live in and enjoy a clean and healthful environment.
  • Ecology and Nature Immersion and Environmental Stewardship: Keney Park provides experiential opportunities for people to immerse themselves in nature, practice sustainable food growing techniques, learn about environmental stewardship, and learn about the impact of the environment on mental, physical, and spiritual health.
  • Hydroponic Demonstrations and Training: Levo International manages an on-site hydroponic demonstration project. They conduct classes on environmental sustainability and provide individuals with the opportunity to maintain the projects.

Financial:

  • Financial Coaching: The Village provides classes to assist people effectively manage their finances and achieve their financial goals. Services include one-on-one coaching, financial education classes (e.g., budgeting, improving credit scores, etc.), and financial goal planning.
  • Tax Preparation: The Hispanic Health Council assists individuals prepare and submit their annual federal and state tax returns.

Emotional:

  • Behavioral Health Services (Child and Family): The Village provides a range of treatment services including individual therapy, family therapy, and group therapy for children and their families.
  • Behavioral Health (Adult): Hispanic Health Council provides psychiatric, therapeutic counseling and medication adherence services to adults who suffer from mental health disorders. Services include assessments, individual and group therapy, couples counseling, and psychiatry.
  • Women’s Wellness Discussions/Seminars: The Hispanic Health Council coordinates a series of discussions and seminars on issues related to Women’s wellness. Examples of the discussions and seminars might include gynecological health, breast cancer, pregnancy issues, and menopause. There will also be opportunities to simply socialize.

Social:

  • Arts of Wellbeing (e.g., Art, Dance, Writing, Music, Theatre): Mental Health Connecticut helps program participants learn new skills, engage in the community, and find and utilize creative outlets of expression. They provide people with these creative outlets by using different artistic genres and at different skill levels.

Spiritual:

  • Spirituality, Meditation, Mindfulness: Subject matter experts provide opportunities for people seeking a meaningful connection with something bigger than themself, which can result in positive emotions, such as peace, awe, contentment, gratitude, and acceptance.

Intellectual:

  • Community Advisory Committee: The Hispanic Health Council convenes and facilitates dialogue with local community members to identify research and advocacy priorities from their perspective.
  • Community-based Participatory Research: The Hispanic Health Council conducts research and evaluation projects to improve systems, policies, and large-scale programs through an equity lens. The objective is to use community-based participatory research (CBPR) to fully engage community members in identifying health-related needs and designing needed programmatic and policy/system changes to address them.
  • Puerto Rican Research Initiative: The Puerto Rican Studies Initiative for Community Engagement and Public Policy (PRSI) is a research initiative seeking to document and support Puerto Ricans’ vital economic, intellectual, and cultural contributions to Connecticut and to provide research-based support for the development of public policies addressing the needs of Puerto Ricans in the State of Connecticut.
  • Community Organizing: The Hispanic Federation facilitates community organizing activities by involving our constituency in identifying problems and the solutions to those problems that they desire and identifying the people and structures that can make those solutions possible. They also discuss pending legislation with the community to attain meaningful feedback.
  • Various Classes: The Hartford Public Library provides classes on issues important to the community. They include literacy courses (e.g., math, science, etc.), racism, environmental responsibility, etc.
  • Legal: Greater Hartford Legal Aid provides legal advice and services.