Committed for more than two decades to social services in the greater Waterbury area, the Hispanic Coalition (HC) became one of the Transforming Communities Initiative (TCI) sites that wants to see changes in the health of Waterbury residents.

For that reason, Víctor López, executive director of the Greater Waterbury Hispanic Coalition, met on February 1st with a representative group of our communities to talk about health beyond the behavior of people, but rather social conditions, including the place where people live, work, learn, pay and worship.

For an hour, the executive director of HC discussed and identified the health priority they would like to see changed in Waterbury. The entire group decided that Waterbury needed to work on System Change, such as substance abuse, especially youth, mental health, and disease prevention.

In the same way, the Hispanic Coalition celebrated on February 6th, a second meeting with the senior population to discuss their health priorities in Waterbury based on their experiences, age and perspective. The priority for this group was Prevention in Chronic Diseases.

According to Waterbury Bridge To Success, the Transforming Communities Initiative (TCI) was launched to advance community partnerships that focus on improving health and wellness in the communities served by Trinity Health Ministries, which is one of the largest multi-agency Catholic health care delivery systems in the nation. TCI is an innovative funding model and technical assistance initiative that supports ten communities through environmental, policy, and systems change strategies to prevent tobacco use and childhood obesity, as well as address social influencers of health.