Executive Summary
The Healthy Neighborhood Initiative Study
The 2007 Community Health Reports: Gulfton Area Neighborhood is an assessment of health and wellbeing at the neighborhood level. Our study in the Gulfton Area Neighborhood (GAN) is a comprehensive Healthy Neighborhood Initiative (HNI), a multi-faceted study conducted over a two and one-half year period with community members involved in each phase of the study. Previous neighborhood studies have been conducted in ten neighborhoods in Houston and one in East Austin and are available on our website (www.slehc.org).
The study uses both quantitative and qualitative data. Quantitative data include health, population, birth, death, and socioeconomic information drawn from a variety of sources, such as the US Census and city and state health departments. Much of the data is available through the SLEHC interactive Community Health Information System at our website (www.slehc.org). Qualitative data were collected through key informant interviews and participatory research activities, completed with and by community members.
The Neighborhood and Population
The focus of the study is the 77081 ZIP code in southwest Houston, and the study also includes small portions of ZIP codes 77074, 77075, and 77036. The CHRISTUS Southwest Community Health Center is located there, and it was their concern for the health needs of the community that motivated their invitation to SLEHC to develop this HNI study. The ZIP codes are comprised of some of Houston’s most densely populated and diverse neighborhoods. The study area comprises the neighborhood, which is only 3.5 square miles, located just outside the West Loop of IH 610 and along South Highway 59. It is bounded generally by Westpark Drive in the north but extends to include some of the areas north of Gulfton to Richmond Avenue, either South Rice Road or Chimney Rock Road to the east, sections of Bellaire Boulevard and Beechnut Street to the south, and Hillcroft Avenue, as well as a pocket west of Hillcroft Avenue between Harwin Street and Bellaire Boulevard to the west.
According to the US Census 2000, 60,637 people reside in this area. Since 1990 alone, the population has increased by over 16,000, or over 26.5 percent, with an increase in the Hispanic population of nearly 16 percent. A review of the past two decades reveals a large demographic reversal as the population nearly doubled in size, and its mostly non-Hispanic White population decreased by nearly 50 percent, while the Hispanic population gained a majority in the community. Of critical concern is the number of young children in the community. In 1980 only 15 percent of the population was children age 18 or younger; by the 2000 count, that number was close to 30 percent. Most interviewees characterized the community as home to hard-working people who are dedicated to their families and particularly to their children. Among shared concerns are crime, lack of steady employment, need for children’s programs, and a lack of awareness of the richness of existing resources.
The neighborhood is home to people from over 50 nationalities, although most are Spanish speaking, and for many this is the gateway to life in the US. Along with other growing Houston Hispanic communities, residents in this area are under added economic and political stressors and tensions, experienced by new immigrants and refugees. The Gulfton Area Neighborhood (GAN), once a primary resettlement site for newly arrived refugees, has relatively small numbers of refugee residents now that the area is nearing its capacity for rental properties. These changes in the size and makeup of the population occurred without change in housing stocks. Approximately 90 apartment complexes that make up the neighborhood continue to age with minimal care, as land values for this area continue to rise. There are already visible signs of new investments by real-estate developers who are renovating shopping centers, and some are building expensive town home enclaves within the community.
Poverty and the Uninsured
According to US Census 2000, households with income of less than $10,000 per year constitute about 15 percent of households. Forty-eight percent of households report an annual income of less than $25,000, compared to the City of Houston, where 33 percent of the population reports these levels of poverty. The Gulfton Area Neighborhood, with an average of 42.2 percent of the population uninsured, represents the highest concentration of medically uninsured in the City of Houston. In Houston 27.5 percent of the population is uninsured, according to 2003 estimates. Ironically, the community has a large number of health providers whose services are geared to insurance beneficiaries and those willing to pay cash. The number of patients who must rely on public health services from City, County, or other nonprofit health providers has overwhelmed the local capacity of those providers, as many of them serve residents of other neighborhoods lacking medical resources. In addition, although the community has virtually no green space or recreational amenities, residents appreciate Burnett Bayland Park, where large groups of people play soccer regularly.
Immigration
The community serves as a US entryway for thousands of new refugees and immigrants who find the community’s international flavor familiar as they gradually acclimate to American life. GAN is rich in social and service organizations that are dedicated to improving the life and well-being of community residents. Residents, however, often remain unaware of many of these resources, perhaps because they tend to remain mistrustful of social structures and tend to keep their focus close to home. Most people work long hours and have little to give to larger, community-wide concerns. Newer immigrants report feeling isolated by language and culture and must focus on the double burden of supporting their own lives and the lives of dependent families in their home countries.
Children and Adolescents
Adolescents who are at increased risk for dropping out of school or becoming gang members or teen parents are aware of the environmental stresses that influence them. They live in dense and poor apartment complexes; some are alienated from their families and have little opportunity for healthy social and physical engagement other than school. As contributors to the study, students at Lee High School helped identify the types of support they need to succeed in their educational goals and negotiate the cultural divide between their immigrant families and mainstream American lifestyles they encounter.
Formal quality programs for very young children are expensive, and far too few are available in the GAN. Large numbers of children are cared for by informal networks, where mothers pool their resources to care for each other’s children as the need arises. In some cases, children are kept locked in apartments as their parents attend to work or other family survival needs. Community programs that help parents prepare their young children for learning exist in small numbers.
Elementary schools in the community provide services beyond the education of their students. They help parents learn English, acquire computer skills, and gain parenting skills. For many young parents, particularly mothers, elementary schools are a connection to the larger community, where they begin to make investments by volunteering their time to the school.
Religious and Spiritual life
Descriptions of the community by key informants and residents often include references to the religious and spiritual roots of the community’s residents. In an environment that often seems alien and where only a few people seem trustworthy, newcomers put their trust in God. Places of worship are the familiar connection of people to their culture.
Churches and mosques in the GAN serve their congregations with physical assistance such as food and clothing and social services. With few exceptions, religious communities within the GAN care only for their own congregations, while religious institutions outside the community provide outreach to the community at large.
Recommendations
Recommendations for potential next steps toward improving community health and well-being rise out of the study’s qualitative and quantitative data and include, but are not limited to, the following suggestions. Potential next steps:
- Continue to work in collaboration with community-based health institutions to close the gaps in the health safety-net for community children and adults. Attending to the health of the whole person includes attention to prevention of mental health dysfunction, which is likely to be a real need for sub groups in the community, such as isolated adults, abused women and youth in disrupted families.
- Continue to work with existing and new collaboratives to address the gaps in knowledge of, and access to, community health, prevention education, and support resources. Key partners could include:
- Local elementary schools that often provide the only connection families have to a community and through whom whole families are educated along with their children.
- Churches and other community organizations where families feel safe and where they can be informed about the array of resources that are available to them.
- Continue to seek input from Gulfton Area Neighborhood advisory groups as they evaluate this report’s findings and determine the priorities and plans for addressing the community’s most urgent health concerns. These priorities may include:
- Improved systematic resource identification and publication of information for use by the community. These resources would address all aspects of health, including resources for primary health care, prevention, mental health care, dental health care, as well as those that address the educational, social and spiritual needs of women, men and children in the community who are living under great urban stress.
- Address the continued high rates of teen pregnancies with special attention to those occurring among middle school students. Engage parents of elementary school children in pregnancy prevention educational programs.
- Continue to address the needs of young children for quality programs that prepare them for school, as these programs also free their parents to pursue their own education or employment.
- Improve the options for quality after-school programs and safe recreation for children in all age groups.
- Engage community arts groups in developing forums for the self-expression of residents, thereby enhancing their participation in community life as they improve their own neighborhoods.
- Work with City of Houston leadership to enrich community resources, such as increasing the number of recreational facilities and developing a community library where children can safely explore the world beyond their immediate, dense urban surroundings.
- Consider using vacant land (e.g., utility easements) for the creation of community gardens that would provide recreational outlets and become a source of fresh food for interested newcomers, particularly day laborers and others who were skilled farmers in their homelands.
Suggestions for funding support:
Support pregnancy prevention curriculum specifically designed for children at middle school level who are at high risk with the inclusion of YES Prep Public School at Lee High School next year.
Support for Lee Child Care Program to include parenting classes, pediatrician visits, and scholarships for child care.
Expand established community peer education programs in order to promote access to and proper utilization of health care.
Support for additional mental health professionals as part of the Lee-Community Collaborative to address social and emotional barriers to successful education and graduation.
More Information:
To learn more about The Gulfton Area Neighborhood, please contact us.
