Health resource guide for Hispanic community

Sanofi-aventis seeks to improve Hispanic access to health care
San Antonio Business Journal

Pharmaceutical company Sanofi-aventis has launched a community health program in San Antonio to help raise awareness and improve care to the city’s Hispanic population.

The program, called It’s In Our Hands, seeks to connect Hispanic residents with local health care professionals and health resources in their neighborhoods. The company has identified language, cultural barriers and lack of access to preventative care as factors for poor health outcomes among Hispanics.

In Bexar County alone, Hispanics are 2.1 times more likely to die of diabetes than whites, 2.6 times more likely to die of cerebrovascular disease than whites, 1.6 times more likely to die of hypertensive heart disease than whites. In addition, two out of five Hispanic adults in San Antonio suffer from insomnia.

The company will hire a community health liaison who will be based in San Antonio. This person will facilitate the flow of information between community-based health groups and the Hispanic community. The company will also develop a health resource guide that will be distributed to patients that will contain information on existing health programs in the San Antonio area.

“Our goal with this partnership is not to create a new program within the San Antonio community, but to support and enhance access to the resources already available,” says Dennis Urbaniak, vice president of innovation and new customer channels for sanofi-aventis. “By establishing meaningful, long-term connections among patients, healthcare providers and resources, we hope to encourage the community to take advantage of its available resources to achieve better health. The necessary components are already in place, we are simply helping to strengthen links within the community and extend their reach to more people.”

The company is also launching this program in New York; Miami; Newark, N.J.; Memphis and Baltimore.

The U.S. headquarters of Sanofi-aventis (NYSE: SNY) are based in Bridgewater, N.J.