Miami Gardens, FL – (August 3, 2022) – After a nationwide challenge search, on July 26th the CDC announced two winners for the 2022 Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health (REACH) Lark Galloway-Gilliam Award. One such recipient was Live Healthy Miami Gardens (LHMG) Program Director, Thamara Labrousse. Ms. Labrousse has been working towards decreasing systems that create health inequities and disparities among Miami Gardens’ African-American, Caribbean-American and Hispanic residents since the inception of the LHMG program in 2014. The other winner was Healthy Savannah a public-private partnership in Georgia.
Labrousse was nominated for the award by the people and community partners that work closest with her daily. Her unrelenting passion and focus on improving the community’s health needs resulted in a collaborative effort between residents, organizations and community leaders working to improve the health and wellness for everyone in Miami Gardens.
“I am grateful and feel so immensely blessed to work with a collective of over one hundred individuals and sixty-eight organizations guided by a shared vision for what it means to improve or remove the conditions that creates barriers to good health. Collective action is as good as the action that each individual in the collective manifests, so it is really amazing to be part of something where everyone is committed to doing their part,” said Ms. Labrousse. “To my colleagues at the CDC and the partners of LHMG, your leadership, commitment and brilliance to our collective work inspire me every single day,” she concluded.
To learn more about LHMG, its programs and partnerships visit: www.livehealthymiamigardens.com.
About the REACH Lark Award Challenge
The REACH program is at the forefront of CDC’s efforts to reduce health disparities. Since REACH was established in 1999, the program has demonstrated success in addressing health disparities and promoting health equity by engaging with diverse communities and implementing culturally tailored interventions. The REACH Lark Award Challenge recognizes extraordinary individuals and organizations, or community coalitions associated with the REACH program. The award recipient will have meaningfully assisted with and carried out culturally tailored interventions that advance health equity, reduce health disparities, and increase community engagement to address preventable health risks such as tobacco use, poor nutrition, physical inactivity, and inadequate access to clinical services. The award recipient’s work will have been in population/groups disproportionately affected by chronic disease; specifically, African American/Black, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Hispanic or Latino, and Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander persons.