Hammonton Health Coalition (HHC) holds mixer
Wednesday, April 3, 2019 • The Hammonton Gazette • Page 3
HEALTH, from Page 1
The HHC was co-initiated by
Ivette
Guillermo-McGahee,
founder and director of Allies in
Caring—a local nonprofit organi-
zation dedicated to helping under-
served individuals move toward
recovery, health and greater inde-
pendence. The key goal for the
coalition has remained to promote
a multi-sector community partner-
ship to improve public health by
creating a culture of inclusion—
an initiative that Guillermo-Mc-
Gahee mirrored with that of New
Jersey Health Initiatives (NJHI),
the statewide grant-making pro-
gram of the Robert Wood Johnson
Foundation that supports innova-
tions and drives conversations to
build healthier communities
through grant-making across the
State of New Jersey.
Much like the HHC, NJHI’s
mission statement, as listed on the
program’s website, is “to improve
the health and health care of all of
New Jersey’s diverse populations,
regions and communities by en-
couraging collaboration across
sectors in the community to foster
deep relationships committed to
long-term change, affording
everyone the opportunity to live
the healthiest life possible.”
In 2018, NJHI chose the HHC
as one of the 12 recipients of a
two-year grant totaling $100,000,
awarded through NJHI’s Up-
stream Action Acceleration Initia-
tive.
Guillermo-McGahee said the
HHC will use the grant funding to
carry out the HHC’s mission of
addressing the adverse childhood
experience of poverty by building
on the assets that are already
found in Hammonton, while mo-
bilizing individuals, associations
and institutions to come together
and create a “culture of inclu-
sion.”
“Hammonton has so many as-
sets and it’s really important to
have them ... It’s my wish that we
all act together, that we all partic-
ipate and learn from each other,”
Guillermo-McGahee said.
Several of the coalition’s com-
munity partners attended the
mixer and spoke in support of the
HHC’s initiative, such as Ham-
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monton School District Superin-
tendent Robin Chieco, who said
the school district recently intro-
duced an Adverse Childhood Ex-
periences (ACEs) program, and a
Trauma-Informed Care program
that will instruct faculty members
on how to properly assist students
who experienced life-altering
trauma during their childhood.
“We’ve been taking the entire
school year now to train our staff
as to how to deal with children
that may have had trauma in their
lives. It can be anything from a
death of a relative or maybe about
having no food and things like
that. It’s just to be better prepared
to assist them in the classroom,
and the Health Coalition is part of
that as well, so we’re very excited
to continue,” Chieco said.
Benjamin Ott spoke on behalf
of the Greater Hammonton Cham-
ber of Commerce, which is also a
HHC community partner. Ott said
the chamber agreed to join the
HHC’s efforts because the organ-
ization believes in the importance
of businesses working to improve
the health of the community by
providing a healthy culture for
their employees to work in.
“What we’ve learned through
our research and through the for-
mation of this group is that health
and the health of the community
and the business community is not
just about doing push-ups and eat-
ing healthy. So, we found that
there are multiple layers to this
and its effects on this community
because there’s a lot of research
out there that says business own-
ers don’t have to take care of their
business; they have to take care of
their employees. Healthier em-
ployees lead to the employees tak-
ing care of the business, so it’s
important for the business com-
munity we have a healthy econ-
omy, we have economic
development and we have healthy
employees who are coming back,
shopping and participating in the
things that Hammonton offers,”
Ott said.
Diane Hagerman, deputy direc-
tor of programs for NJHI, was
also in attendance during the
mixer. Hagerman said it was sat-
isfying to personally witness the
passion and commitment the HHC
has for the community of Ham-
monton, which further exempli-
fied why they were among the 12
organizations in the state to be
chosen for the NJHI’s Upstream
Action Acceleration Initiative
grant program.
“A lot of times, smaller commu-
nities like Hammonton either
don’t feel like they’re competitive
and don’t apply for our grants, or
they’re in the shadow of the cities
See COALITION, Page 4
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