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ChesMRC recipient of the Talbot County MOTA Grant

mota-mhhd-logo051412The Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DHMH) has awarded ChesMRC with the Minority Outreach & Technical Assistance (MOTA) grant for Talbot County. This will be ChesMRC’s 3rd year as the counties MOTA grant recipient .

This fiscal year, ChesMRC will focus on reducing the number of uninsured as well as obese minorities in Talbot County. ChesMRC has been extremely successful in reaching the underserved communities of Talbot County both through the distribution of electronic and printed health messages and with community event outreach. Over the years we have developed several signature health events to successfully reach and engage minority communities in Talbot County – Think Pink Event, held in October,focuses on breast cancer awareness, Thankful to Wellness is held in November and focuses on healthy eating and cooking to prevent obesity, Healthy Heart Night is held in February and focuses on diabetes prevention and Minority Health Week is held in April and involves a week of healthy activities to engage the community. Last year ChesMRC conducted 76 health outreach events and reached 2,641 people across the entire minority community. This year’s goals will be to enroll and assist 100 community members with health insurance, engage 100 families to participate in healthy eating activities, distribute 3,000 health messages to the community and measure outcomes to demonstrate increase in knowledge based on our health messaging to 250 community members.

We are grateful to be able to continue our work in providing essential health messages and assistance to the minority community in Talbot County and to work toward eliminating health disparities in our county and state.

Started in 2001, MOTA originally was implemented to focus on providing outreach and technical assistance to minority communities ensuring participation in the tobacco and cancer community health coalitions under the Cigarette Restitution Fund. In 2010 DHMH announced the expansion of MOTA beyond Tobacco and Cancer to reduce racial and ethnic health disparities throughout the state of Maryland. The expanded focus now includes major health disparities that affect racial and ethnic minority communities such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, infant mortality, obesity and asthma.