VCU news

By Frances Dumenci

Picking up the camera, Loretta Wallace sat on her porch and took a photo of the bus stop down the street. To her, this photo encapsulates one of the issues facing her Richmond north side neighborhood – lack of transportation and access.

“Where we live, transportation is limited. People have to walk down the street to get to a bus, and we have no sidewalks. It is hard for people with disabilities. We need accessibility for everyone,” Wallace said.

Despite various programs in the Richmond area designed to improve access to health and health care, a number of significant barriers still exist, including insufficient transportation, long health appointment wait times and scheduling issues, and inadequate fresh food choices.

“There’s no grocery store within walking distance in my neighborhood,” Wallace said. “People need access to food – fresh fruits and vegetables. It is vital for their health.”

Members of the Highland Park neighborhood provided their time and talents to articulate the challenges they encounter living a healthy life and accessing health care services in their community through The Community Voice project. Using cameras provided by the project, community members were asked to photograph their own challenges and successes in relation to an identified issue or research question.

The community members then worked with the research team as co-researchers to discuss their photographs, develop photo captions and uncover overarching themes relating to the identified issue of concern.

“I enjoyed working on this project very much,” Wallace said. “It gave us a way to come together in the community and talk about the issues. It was very educational for us. I learned a lot from what other people see.”

The research and community team, in partnership with Hands Up Ministries, a nonprofit focused on addressing poverty in the city and providing affordable housing, includes students and faculty from Virginia Commonwealth University departments of health administration and art education. Consultants from the VCU Health System, the Virginia Coordinated Care program and the VCU Department of Social and Behavioral Health also participated in the project.

“The photo voice project was a fantastic conversation starter with many who had no idea what was happening in the city homes and with their providers,” said Cassie Matthew, founder of Hands Up Ministries. “There are many educated people who don’t have any idea what goes on behind the poverty wall making up solutions without ever consulting a person in poverty. Community members just want to be heard, listened to and be treated with dignity – something we all want.”

While many have studied these challenges, the community members and patients surveyed are often those who are able to make their way to care providers. The voices of many, for whom these barriers remain too significant to seek care at all, often remain silent.

“By going into the community, we hoped to bring additional awareness to the more subtle barriers to health and health care access encountered by our underserved citizens in their struggle to be healthy,” said Patricia Carcaise-Edinboro, Ph.D., research associate and adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Health Administration in the VCU School of Allied Health Professions. “Our primary desired outcome for this project is the empowerment of individual co-researchers, and collectively, of the community in which they reside.

“This empowerment comes from being heard, participating in dialogue to identify issues important to the community and having the opportunity to bring identified concerns to influential advocates,” Carcaise-Edinboro said.

In the final stage of the project, the photographs and accompanying stories are being exhibited to the larger community, including relevant decisionmakers, to increase knowledge and awareness about the identified issues and barriers, initiate constructive dialogue and promote grassroots action for change.

“We are very excited to exhibit the photovoice project at the University of Richmond Downtown,” Carcaise-Edinboro said. “The recent opening reception was well attended by the academic community, local policymakers and the Highland Park community. The reception provided the opportunity for visitors to speak firsthand with the community participants and hear more about their stories and photographs.

“The ability to articulate their stories and share their images with a larger audience has empowered several community participants to take the next steps in their quest for a healthy life. A health care resource manual is being created within the community by a participant and a larger discussion about how to continue community meetings has begun,” Carcaise-Edinboro said.

The exhibit at the University of Richmond Downtown, 626 E. Broad St., is open for viewing Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. until May 9. For more information about the project, visit www.photovoicerva.org.

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