SDOP Recipient: African Family Health Organization

African Family Health Organization

AFHOWhen a friend of hers died from a highly treatable condition because she did not know where to go and could not communicate with health providers, a Senegalese emigrant founded AFAHO so that French-speaking members of the African and Caribbean Diaspora could access the health care that is available to them.

The African Family Health Organization (AFAHO). AFAHO works to address an unmet need among members of the African and Caribbean immigrant and refugee communities in the greater Philadelphia area who experience difficulties accessing health and human services due to cultural, geographic, linguistic, and other barriers. AFAHO assists, serves and empowers members of these communities in order to improve their access to these services. They serve other people of African descent including African Americans and Afro-Latinos who also face health disparities and lack of access to quality healthcare.

AFAHO has a long history of serving these populations and has been at the forefront of developing creative and culturally-appropriate programs to address their needs. Staff initiated an important and oft-cited needs assessment study in 2005 on the structural and cultural barriers to HIV/AIDS care for African immigrant women in Philadelphia. These barriers to HIV/AIDS care are similar to barriers experienced in other areas of health, and AFAHO continues to develop and implement programs aimed at mitigating these barriers to ensure our target population can access and receive critical health and social services.

Annually, AFAHO provides direct services to nearly 800 members of these communities and reaches another 1,000 through community outreach and education with a small staff of committed individuals. Based on estimates of there being nearly 100,000 African and Caribbean immigrants in the greater Philadelphia area, with varied needs, we are poised and ready to meet these needs; anticipating growth and support. They are committed to assisting those hard-to-reach and under served members of the population most impacted by health disparities in order to improve their health outcomes.