New health initiative in North Hartford part of ongoing work to improve quality of life in neighborhoods

A recreation center in the heart of the North End is now home to a health initiative aimed at improving care and community support for Hartford families.

The Hartford Healthy Family Initiative will be located in Parker Memorial Community Center on Main Street. The city’s Department of Health and Human Services is running the program to promote and increase access to healthy foods, breastfeeding support services and lactation consultants, physical activity and other hallmarks of disease prevention.

The initiative aims to reduce chronic illnesses, like heart disease and Type 2 diabetes, particularly those tied to obesity, smoking and poor nutrition.

The health department also plans to increase the number of North Hartford residents being referred to health and preventative care programs by working closely with community health workers and pharmacists.

The city launched Hartford Healthy Families Sunday afternoon during the 9th Annual Community Health and Wellness Fair at Parker Memorial.

A 2018 grant from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is supporting the initiative.

Hartford received $792,000 through the agency’s Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health program to better serve black and Hispanic residents in the Northeast, Upper Albany and Clay Arsenal neighborhoods.

Hartford Healthy Families adds to a broader effort to expand services and quality of life in the poorest section of the city, North Hartford.

Last summer, Hartford was named one of 17 cities in the country to receive an EnVision Center, a federal program for families who receive housing assistance by become self-sufficient. That center is also located at Parker Memorial.

In 2017, the North Hartford Triple Aim Collaborative formed as part of North Hartford’s designation as a federal Promise Zone. Its three aims are improving well-being, the impact of each dollar spent and health — specifically, life expectancy.

To date, the NHTAC has started a diabetes prevention program and supported urban farming, nutrition training, gun violence prevention, and access to the opioid overdose-reversal drug naloxone. The NHTAC is also involved in several state and national initiatives, including Trinity Health’s Transforming Communities Initiative, Invest Health, and Wellville.

Other efforts are private.

For several years, Hartford Food System has been trying to bring a full-service supermarket to North Hartford through a proposed development called Healthy Hartford Hub. The nonprofit hopes it would eventually add a pharmacy, medical clinic, exercise space and housing to the development.

And renovations are underway at the old M. Swift & Sons factory, which is being redeveloped by another nonprofit, Community Solutions, to include a 4,000-square-foot health hub to address health gaps among Northeast Hartford residents.

Rebecca Lurye can be reached at rlurye@courant.com.