Description
The Flowers Heritage Foundation (FHF) addresses underserved population health inequities and builds healthier communities. We collaborate, outreach, and educate through advocacy and health policy reform. Our current priority is reducing the spread of HIV/AIDS through educational efforts.
Located in the heart of an HIV epicenter, a community under a state of emergency for African-Americans at risk for HIV for more than ten years, and separated from the benefits of San Francisco funding opportunities targeting adults, the Flowers Heritage Foundation is located in Oakland, California.
FHF's innovative Don't Turn Your Back On AIDS™ (DTYBOA) program uses artistic expression as a means to educate youths about the risks of HIV infection. Each year 200 teens participate and become peer educators and community ambassadors.
The Think Tank program convenes stakeholders from different organizations to create new strategies, improve treatment and service, and develop new approaches to help reduce the spread of the infection. Public awareness and mass media campaigns are produced. Some physicians began routine AIDS/HIV testing in their practices after participating in this program.
In five short years, we have strategically collaborated with and supported our nonprofit partners in reducing HIV/AIDS infection rates and increasing testing and screening.
Our Foundation seeks to expand and develop our innovative, in-classroom HIV prevention and awareness presentations and annual art competition. Our goal is to replicate this program's interactive health education, orientation, and outreach to low-income, under-funded high schools, promoting an HIV prevention-focused annual art competition in communities hardest hit with high rates of HIV infection. Long term, we aspire to share the models nationally.
