Transforming Rocky Mount
Rocky Mount, North Carolina
OIC, The North Carolina Association of Community Development Corporations, and Legal Aid NC has tightened our partnership to accept the challenge to push Community-Centered Health, equity, and highlight racial segregation as a non-medical driver of poor health outcomes. Our partnership, known as ‘Transforming Rocky Mount,’ set out to attack the root causes of residential disparities by creating space and opportunities for low-income people to be leaders who represent community issues and push for visible change. Transforming Rocky Mount is working directly with residents, which is the greatest source for community led change.
Cooper Blackwell
Resource Development Coordinator, Opportunities Industrialization Center
Location
Rocky Mount, NC
Partners
Legal Aid of North Carolina, North Carolina Association of Community Development Corporations, Opportunities Industrialization Center, South East Rocky Mount Neighborhood
Issue Area(s)
Housing, Economic Stability
Background
Transforming Rocky Mount is located in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, a city in the midst of transformation. While positive efforts to revitalize the city are underway, a history of racial segregation has resulted in a community where people of color are disproportionately populating economically distressed neighborhoods.
Using the Community-Centered Health approach, Transforming Rocky Mount is working in marginalized communities to support residents in implementing systems‐focused solutions to reduce stressors in their physical and social environments that have contributed to a high prevalence of chronic disease and depression. This work is focused in low-income African‐American communities in Edgecombe and Nash counties that are impacted by a long history of housing segregation.
Transforming Rocky Mount is a member of the second cohort of Community-Centered Health grantees and recently completed their 15-month planning phase.
