Good afternoon, and thank you so much for our guests today.

Just briefly going over the staff report that this is an update on the Minority Health Initiative programs.

We will discuss the minority health initiatives next month during budget when the budget is released on March 13th, 15th, whatever date.

So the report just highlights the work of the three initiatives the African American Health Program, the Latino Health Initiative, and the Asian American Health Initiative.

I just want to note that that uh initiatives have been in place for a 20 plus years, responding to the needs in the community when we think about uh things that have had occurred like during COVID 19, um, the Affordable Care Act and supporting our immigrant community that the health initiatives have really health initiatives and programs have really been on the forefront of trying to support community members.

I know our uh department has a robust presentation, so I will let them get started, and I can address any questions.

Thank you.

All right, thank you for the opportunity to be here.

Good afternoon.

Um I'm here to brief you today on what we have collectively called the minority health initiatives and programs, but I will say I do not love that name in that in the grouping.

We are really here to talk about the African American Health Program, the Asian American Health Initiative, and Latino Health Initiative.

Montgomery County is one of the most diverse counties in the nation.

In fact, collectively, our Asian Black and Latino communities make up the majority of the county's population.

So the term minority does not fully reflect the reality here in Montgomery County.

In MOCO, no single racial or ethnic group makes up a majority.

Instead, we have a truly multicultural community, and I'm going to go through some of the statistics of that today.

Today I will share how these initiatives work, the communities that they serve, and why their continued partnership with the county is essential to improving health and well-being for all residents.

We have the Latino Health Initiative.

And our vision is a thriving, empowered, and healthy community in Montgomery County where all residents have equitable access to opportunities, resources, and conditions that support their overall well-being.

Just a little brief background.

Each of these programs, they sprung up in the late 90s, early 2000s.

AAHP was launched in 1999 to address the disproportionate health inequities affecting African Americans.

LHI followed just one year later in 2000, focusing on health, language, economic, and workforce barriers impacting Latino residents, and AAHI came to fruition in 2005, the first county program directed to the unique health needs of the Asian American communities.

Each of these programs and initiatives sits within the Department of Health and Human Services.

Each of them has an executive steering committee, which is an independent group of volunteers.

And we'll go a little bit more into what those steering committees are comprised of.

So collectively, the executive steering committees for these programs and initiatives serve as critical bridges between the Montgomery County community and the Department of Health and Human Services.

They are comprised of community leaders, professionals, and advocates.

These volunteers, and they are volunteers, unpaid bodies, provide strategic guidance, technical expertise, and community insight to ensure that each initiative remains responsive to the needs of the populations that it serves.

They help shape priorities, inform design, and promote data-informed approaches that advance prevention, wellness, and health equity.

In addition, the committee committees play an important advocacy role in elevating community concerns and supporting efforts to secure the resources and partnerships needed to improve health outcomes.

Through this collaborative relationship, the steering committees strengthen the connection between DHHS and the communities we serve, helping to ensure that the programs are community informed, culturally responsive, and align with the county's broader commitment to health equity.

They are quite literally the eyes and ears and hearts and hands in the community.

Each one is unique and structured to meet the needs of their respective communities, and each one plays a vital role in ensuring that the work of DHHS remains grounded in community voice, guided by lived experience, and focused on advancing equitable health and well-being for the populations that they serve.

Just to see where they sit within the Department of Health and Human Services, you will see at the top the director.

Each of these programs and initiatives sits within the office of the director with oversight from myself as chief health officer and collaboration with the chief administrative officer.

You will also see at the bottom public health services.

The Black Physicians Health Care Network sits within public health services with a dotted line over to AHP.

We will not be spending much time talking about BPHN today as they are a separate service area and structured quite differently from these programs.

As you can see, the African American Health Program in FY26 was appropriated 4.3 million dollars, Asian American Health Initiative $3.7 million, and the Latino Health Initiative $6.2 million.

BPHN was also appropriated $3.6 million, and again, that is administered through public health services.

In the last 36 years, we have seen the black population increase by 58% from 12% to 19%.

And you can see the areas of where that demographic shift has occurred within the county.

We also see it's important to recognize that none of these communities is a monolith.

And as we see diversity in the county overall, we also see diversity increasing within each of these racial and ethnic groups.

And so for our Black and African American population, 56% of them are native-born black, but then we also see about 36% from sub-Saharan Africa and about 8% from the Caribbean.

For our sorry, I didn't advance that.

Our Asian and Pacific Islander population has seen almost doubled, see an 87% increase in that same time frame, and you can also see where those shifts have happened across the county.

And you can also see the breakdown within that community.

Similarly, for our Hispanic population, we've seen them triple over that same time period, and you can see across the county where that diversity lies.

And the majority from Central America, about 20% from South American.

Um 55% North uh North American Caribbean is incorrect, it should be 15%, um, and then other Hispanic Latino.

Um Montgomery County also prides itself on our language diversity.

Uh 43% of residents in the county speak a language other than English at home, again, stressing the importance of making sure that we are uh that our materials that go out are reflective and respective of the communities in which we are trying to reach.

I will just bring up COVID as an example of the collaboration and importance that these groups brought to the county.

Um we saw the success that we saw in vaccination was in large part due to work through and with our health initiatives and programs, especially around vaccination.

Uh, this chart just shows um vaccination inside and out of the county, the bottom pink lines, the darker shades, the dark red at the bottom are vaccines that happen within the county, and the lighter shades uh above it are vaccines that happened outside of the county.

What we saw is once the county had uh had vaccine in our hands, once we were able to have mass vaccination sites here, uh we were able to fully implement our vaccine equity framework and really saw significant improvements in being able to reach our um our diverse communities.

When you look at the outcomes, our successes, our black and African American residents were within two percentage points of non-Hispanic whites near parity, essentially within standard deviation.

Our Hispanic and Asian communities exceeded uh white non-Hispanic uh rate residents in terms of their vaccination rates.