The Sunnyside Strong collaboration is a community-engaged research project in Houston, Texas. The project, supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Interdisciplinary Research Leaders program and led by Felicia Jackson, Family Support Services Manager at the Houston Area Urban League, Rachel Kimbro, PhD, a sociologist at Rice University, and Quianta Moore, MD, JD and a Fellow in Child Health Policy at the Baker Institute for Public Policy.
Sunnyside is a historically African-American community with high poverty rates but a strong history and culture on the South side of Houston. Together with a community advisory board (CAB) comprised of local leaders, we conducted a household survey to assess needs and strengths. Results have been used to advance goals for neighborhood improvements. Our partnership is innovative in that it unites Sunnyside community members, an academic (Kimbro), a health policy and community-engaged research expert (Moore), and a non-profit manager with decades of experience in Sunnyside and surrounding communities (Jackson). The three-year effort was deeply community-engaged and will continue in the future. The survey was specifically designed to reveal the types of information that would help our CAB advocate for themselves with city leaders. Although the survey does show high rates of food insecurity, high blood pressure, diabetes, worries about crime and safety, and difficulty with health care access and transportation, it also revealed a very strong social infrastructure. Collective efficacy and social cohesion were high; as was political participation and engagement with civic clubs. This strong social infrastructure shows policymakers that investments in Sunnyside will pay off. The neighborhood has the right building blocks for success.