❮ Projects page Sunset Park Health Council dba Lutheran Family Health Centers (LFHC)

Spatial Analysis Project:

Sunset Park, Brooklyn, is a culturally diverse low-income neighborhood in southwest Brooklyn, NY, and almost half of its residents are immigrants. LFHC’s Community Empowerment Program offers an array of adult education programming, including English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) classes. Over the past year, we have collected needs assessment data on a cohort of approximately 300 ESOL students. Combining this rich dataset with others, we want to gain insight into the gap between available community services and students’ specific needs.

We want to analyze the distribution of specific needs by student address, and also by student country of origin. We also have a detailed dataset of resources and services available in Sunset Park and beyond. We want to analyze resources available by location versus the specific needs of students by their addresses. In particular, we want to refine these analyses based on the students’ ethnicity and language.

Data available:

By summer 2015, we will have needs assessment data for one full year of ESOL students (a cohort of approximately 300) entered into our relational tracking database, Efforts to Outcomes (ETO). This will include information on students’ address, demographics, housing, health, employment, language and learning background, income and benefits.

We also have an up-to-date, comprehensive community resource database developed with partners across Sunset Park listing available services, types, and locations.

Maps and Reports that will be created:

• Maps illustrating students’ primary needs by home addresses.
• In particular, we’d like to see density of needs and spatial analysis of correlated needs.
• Maps relating needs to available resources in the neighborhood and throughout New York City.

We expect the accompanying report to analyze high priority needs, needs that are correlated or co-morbid, identify gaps in resources, and recommend strategies to overcome them.

How the maps and reports will be used:

This report will become part of our larger effort to more intentionally tailor services for immigrant families in Sunset Park. We would use these maps to identify locations for adapting and enhancing existing services to better serve our participants. We also foresee using the maps to illustrate our community’s specific needs as part of advocacy efforts and funding requests.