Dayton is known as an immigrant-friendly city for its policies and programs that support immigrant integration and welcome newcomers. In 2017, Dayton became the first Certified Welcoming city in the United States in recognition of these efforts. The foreign-born population in Dayton has continued to grow over the past decade. As more immigrants and refugees make Dayton their home, institutions must remain flexible and adapt their services to meet evolving needs.

Many immigrants and refugees who make Dayton their home come from countries with high rates of certain diseases and limited access to screening, health education, and treatment. In addition to this vulnerability, they often experience stress navigating the complexity of the U.S. healthcare system.

Although many are eligible for federal assistance, they face challenges accessing these services due to language and cultural barriers. For example, a 2011 study in Dayton found that refugees had difficulty accessing Medicaid benefits because of language barriers. Community health assessments have also reported that immigrants often struggle to understand medical information provided by healthcare professionals.

Another barrier to healthcare access for immigrants is transportation. Many Sub-Saharan African immigrants arrive in the United States as refugees and are eligible for Medicaid benefits. Although Medicaid covers transportation to medical appointments, local healthcare providers report high rates of missed appointments (“no-shows”) within this population, often citing transportation challenges or miscommunication between clients and transportation service providers.

These challenges persist despite multiple surveys and studies that have provided informed recommendations for improving healthcare education and addressing language and cultural barriers. While organizations such as Welcome Dayton, Five Rivers Health Clinics, the Public Health Department, Catholic Social Services, and Montgomery County Job and Family Services have worked to improve the health and well-being of immigrants and refugees, significant gaps remain.

A sustained focus on healthcare access for Sub-Saharan African immigrants has been limited. Ebenezer Healthcare Access seeks to address gaps that these organizations have been unable to fully resolve due to constraints in capacity, funding, and cultural or linguistic accessibility. The organization aims to address four key social determinants of health for Sub-Saharan African immigrants: access to care, language, transportation, and health education.

Our Strategic Objectives

In carrying its project forward, Ebenezer Health Access intends to:

• Provide health education to immigrants using multilingual Community health workers

• Train volunteers from the community (and local universities) and use them to provide quality language-related services (medical interpretation and medical translation)

• Provide medical scheduling services using a hotline where immigrants can call in their home language

• Partner with Managed Care Plans to facilitate immigrants' transportation to and from doctor's office

• Provide immigrants afterschool tutoring and computer literacy training

• Eliminate or at least significantly mitigate language and cultural barriers to healthcare access by the provision of both medical interpretation and medical translation and the establishment of a hotline for all their medical-related queries

• Improve immigrants' access to healthcare by providing transportation to those unable to afford a vehicle of their own or are simply non-drivers, opening a driving school for those who cannot drive where information and all the teachings are delivered in a language that immigrants can comprehend

• Recognizing that the use of computer is omnipresent in all facets of life, Ebenezer will equip immigrants with basic computer literacy skills that will enable them to easily navigate the healthcare system and be informed at the right time and from the right and trusted sources

• Providing healthcare information and training, particularly in relation to prenatal and postnatal care, which is key to the well-being of pregnant women, breastfeeding mothers and infants. Similarly, we intend to disseminate information relative to vaccination against, early screening and treatment of deadly female cancers: breast and cervical cancers