United States
Global Communities carries out programs across the United States that focus on strengthening health, safety, education, and economic opportunity. Our work builds on partnerships that began in 1952 and continues today, grounded in local leadership and shaped by approaches that reflect community priorities.
Global Communities was founded in 1952 as the Cooperative Housing Foundation, a U.S.-based organization that supported the construction of affordable housing through a cooperative model. From the beginning, we worked alongside communities to respond to local priorities, helping build more than 60,000 houses across 35 states over three decades.
While our name has changed and our work now reaches more than 30 countries, our commitment to partnering with communities in the United States remains central. In 2020, Global Communities merged with Project Concern International (PCI), an organization with a long history of advancing health programs along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Today, our U.S. programs reflect this legacy of partnership, offering community-informed initiatives that strengthen health, positive youth development, education, and economic opportunity, particularly in areas with limited access to resources.
Our work includes maternal and child health initiatives, human trafficking prevention, community health worker training, and Medi-Cal support programs focused on housing stability, care coordination, and improved birth outcomes. We are recognized nationally for designing practical, cost-effective approaches that are built to last.
We also bring together public agencies, health systems, and community-based organizations through multi-agency collaborations such as the Healthy Start Community Consortia and the San Diego Trafficking Prevention Collective. These efforts expand access to education, outreach, and workforce training, helping individuals and families connect to quality care and essential services.
From training more than 400 community health workers and doulas to supporting people enrolled in Medi-Cal with housing and care coordination, Global Communities continues to strengthen systems that help families stay healthy and secure.
Current Programs
Strengthening Maternal & Child Health
Global Communities works to support healthy pregnancies, strong starts for children, and stable family environments. Our maternal and child health programs provide comprehensive support tailored to individual needs during pregnancy, childbirth, and the postpartum period for families in San Diego, Riverside, and San Bernardino Counties. Programs are offered in more than four languages and are designed to reflect local context and family priorities.
Our approach draws on proven practices that operate across multiple levels—supporting families directly through education and home-based services, strengthening access and quality of care within communities, and improving coordination across local systems. We build on existing community strengths while addressing gaps in services that affect pregnancy and early childhood outcomes.
Through our Healthy Start programs, families receive support focused on healthy birth outcomes and early child development, with an emphasis on nurturing parent–child relationships. Health educators, known as Perinatal Navigators, provide home visits from pregnancy through a child’s first 18 months. To support continuity and long-term capacity, Healthy Start also invests in perinatal workforce development by training childbirth educators, doulas, and lactation educators from local communities.
In addition to direct services, Global Communities works with partners to strengthen community-led solutions and long-term improvements in maternal and child health. Our Community Consortia bring together health providers, public agencies, community members, and local organizations to identify priorities and advance practical system changes. In San Bernardino County, this includes housing approaches that support pregnancy and postpartum needs. In Riverside and San Diego Counties, efforts focus on reducing the effects of heat and air quality on birth outcomes.
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Human Trafficking Awareness & Prevention
An estimated 3,500 people are affected by human trafficking in San Diego County each year. The average age at which children are first drawn into commercial sexual exploitation is 16, with recruitment often occurring in middle school and high school settings. Global Communities’ Human Trafficking Prevention Initiative focuses on prevention by strengthening early education, coordination, and community-based responses.
Through Project ROOTS, Global Communities works with young people ages 8–13 to build knowledge and skills related to healthy relationships, personal safety, and recognizing exploitation. The program is one of three prevention efforts within the San Diego Trafficking Prevention Collective, a countywide collaboration working to bring age-appropriate trafficking prevention education to every school district.
Global Communities also launched the Employers Ending Exploitation Alliance to engage local businesses in strengthening workplace awareness, promoting responsible practices, and addressing conditions that allow exploitation to occur.
Community Health Worker Training
Global Communities, including its earlier work as Project Concern International (PCI), has a long history of training and supporting Community Health Workers (CHWs) to respond to local and regional health priorities. Since establishing the first Community Health Worker Certification Program at San Diego City College in 1999, our work has focused on preparing people with strong ties to their communities to serve as trusted health educators and connectors.
Our training programs have graduated more than 400 individuals who support access to care across the region. Programs are designed to reflect the languages, experiences, and health needs of the communities where CHWs live and work, including East African, Haitian, Middle Eastern, and Hispanic communities. In addition to strengthening community health, these efforts create practical pathways into the health workforce.
Key initiatives and outcomes include:
- COVID-19 Response: Trained 36 contact tracers fluent in 10 languages, supporting San Diego County's public health response.
- HPV Prevention: Trained 61 CHWs who contributed to increased vaccination rates —from 42% to 67% for children and from 7% to 22% for adults— in high-needs areas of City Heights.
- Heart Health: In partnership with the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, trained 117 CHWs who reached more than 10,000 people with education on chronic disease prevention.
- Perinatal Workforce Development: Trained 121 doulas, lactation educators, and childbirth educators, supporting a stronger and more representative perinatal workforce.
- ALCANCE Project: Through a 10-week CHW Academy, graduated more than 350 CHWs, resulting in over 2,000 referrals for preventive care and measurable improvements in health outcomes for Hispanic/Latina women with limited access to services.
Medi-Cal Support Programs: Integrated Care Management, Housing, and Community Health Workers
CalAIM (California Advancing and Innovating Medi-Cal) is a multi-year initiative led by the California Department of Health Care Services to strengthen coordination, access, and continuity across Medi-Cal services. Global Communities contributes to this effort by helping people enrolled in Medi-Cal understand their benefits, connect to care, and navigate health and social service systems.
Through Enhanced Care Management (ECM), we work alongside healthcare providers and community partners to support individuals with complex needs. Our approach focuses on coordination, follow-up, and practical problem-solving — strengthening connections between families and local providers to improve access to consistent, effective care.
Our Medi-Cal support services include:
- Housing as Healthcare: Stable housing plays a critical role in health and recovery. Through our Housing Navigator program, Global Communities supports people enrolled in Medi-Cal who are experiencing housing instability. Staff assist with identifying available housing options, accessing resources such as deposits, securing placements, and providing follow-up support to help maintain stable housing.
- Improving Birth Outcomes for All: Medi-Cal provides essential support during pregnancy and the postpartum period. Global Communities’ birth outcomes work offers comprehensive support that includes childbirth education, personalized care planning, prenatal and postpartum services, and coordination with health care providers. These efforts focus on improving consistency of care and supporting healthy outcomes for parents and infants.
- Community Health Worker Supports: Community Health Workers (CHWs) have long been central to Global Communities’ health programming. As California expands the role of CHWs within formal health systems, our work continues to adapt. Our CHWs provide preventive services and education related to chronic and infectious conditions, behavioral health, sexual and reproductive health, oral health, aging, climate-related health concerns, and family safety — helping people enrolled in Medi-Cal stay connected to care and resources.
Client Feedback: "We are so grateful for the support we have received from this Housing program. I cannot thank you enough. You all have added so much quality of life ,and I want to thank everyone involved who has made it possible. You're our guardian angel!"
Frontline Health Worker Coalition
Global Communities’ partner IntraHealth hosts the Frontline Health Workers Coalition, the only global alliance advocating for strategic, sustainable funding and policy reforms that elevate health workforce resilience and effectiveness. With a focus on locally led development, the coalition champions all cadres of health workers, from doctors and nurses to midwives and community health workers. Our work shows the return on investment in health workers, influencing the practices and actions of governments, donors, and multilateral partners to drive measurable impact in global health. Key coalition achievements during 2024 included collaborating to convene the inaugural Africa Health Workforce Investment Forum—which brought 150 decision-makers together to obtain consensus and commitments on addressing Africa’s severe health workforce shortage—and mobilizing participation in the annual World Health Worker Week advocacy campaign, which earned an estimated 95 million social media impressions across the globe.
Previous Programs
COVID-19 Vaccination Education & Outreach
Global Communities began COVID-19 vaccination education and outreach in February 2021, working with local organizations across San Diego County to support access to accurate information and vaccination services. Early efforts included coordination with community partners serving older adults, such as Meals on Wheels, to help connect clients with vaccination opportunities.
Beginning in May 2021, Global Communities partnered with the County of San Diego Health and Human Services Agency to deliver vaccination education and outreach in the Central and North Central regions of the county. Activities focused on improving access to reliable information and supporting informed decision-making around vaccination.
Program activities included in-person events with community partners, virtual education sessions for parents and school staff, and outreach through schools and local businesses. The program also maintained an online presence to engage young people through social media platforms.
COVID-19 Outreach Specialists leading this work were trained public health educators with strong ties to the communities they served and provided services in English, Spanish, Arabic, and Tagalog. (Completed in 2022)
A Community Approach to COVID-19 Contact Tracing
In September 2020, Global Communities—then operating as Project Concern International (PCI)—partnered with the County of San Diego Health and Human Services Agency to support COVID-19 contact tracing efforts. The program focused on reaching people who had been exposed to COVID-19, providing timely information, and supporting monitoring efforts to help limit further spread.
Throughout the program, staff provided services in 13 languages, including English, Spanish, Tagalog, Ilocano, Vietnamese, Cantonese, Mandarin, Arabic, Chaldean, Kurdish/Assyrian, Farsi/Dari, and Pashto. This language capacity helped ensure clear communication and understanding during a period of widespread uncertainty and rapidly changing public health guidance.
On average, the team followed up with 265 new contacts each week after cases were identified by county disease investigators. Over the course of the program, staff completed 34,588 outreach calls. These efforts supported quarantine and isolation guidance for thousands of individuals during critical phases of the pandemic response. (Completed in 2021)
Participatory Community Development
With support from the John Deere Foundation, Global Communities carried out Flourishing Communities, a place-based initiative focused on strengthening community and economic activity in the historic neighborhoods of Moline, Illinois. The program emphasized local participation and practical collaboration to support neighborhood priorities.
Flourishing Communities worked with residents, community organizations, and local businesses to support neighborhood-led efforts. Over the course of the program, more than 1,000 residents were engaged, and 61 local organizations and businesses participated in activities that strengthened coordination, shared skills, and local problem-solving.
The program brought together residents from the Floreciente and Stephens Parkview neighborhoods to identify shared goals and build momentum around locally driven initiatives. Efforts focused on strengthening relationships, supporting local leadership, and increasing the capacity to organize resources in ways that reflected community priorities.
Flourishing Communities concluded in 2019 and continues to inform Global Communities’ approach to place-based work in the United States, particularly efforts that emphasize local leadership, partnership, and long-term sustainability. (Completed in 2019)
Collective Impact Along the U.S.-Mexico Border
With funding from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Global Communities led the Border States Collaborative Improvement and Innovation (CoIIN), a multi-state effort focused on improving access to early and ongoing prenatal care across the U.S.–Mexico border region.
The initiative brought together state health departments and community partners in Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas to strengthen coordination, share learning, and test practical, place-based approaches to prenatal care. State teams worked collaboratively to pilot solutions that reflected regional context while using shared measurement and continuous improvement methods.
Tested approaches included updates to national data practices to better capture cross-border prenatal care in U.S. vital statistics; a confidential, no-cost digital tool providing information on pregnancy testing, prenatal care, and sexual health; updates to a community health worker prenatal and preconception curriculum in New Mexico; and clinic workflow improvements that reduced delays in scheduling prenatal care and increased first-trimester visits.
The CoIIN concluded with a stronger cross-state network and a set of tested approaches that continue to inform efforts to improve prenatal care access and coordination across the region. One outcome included a national policy update that will strengthen how prenatal care data are captured in vital statistics moving forward. (Completed in 2020)
Impact
1,200
people reached
across all programs
in 2024
100+
women trained by Healthy Start
to become childbirth educators, doulas,
and lactation educators
6,880
people reached through
contact tracing from
2020-2022
Resources
Promoting Positive Youth Development & the Advancement of Adolescent Girls and Young Women
COVID-19 Response Program Summary Approach
Closing the U.S. Sanitation Equity Gap: Exploring Opportunities to Learn from the Global Sanitation Sector Experience
An Infant Carrier Intervention and Breastfeeding Duration: A Randomized Controlled Trial
Youth-led development of a Chatbot to Increase Early Prenatal Care Utilization in Santa Cruz County, Arizona
Enhancing the Pregnancy Test Visit to Increase Timely Prenatal Care
Cross-border Prenatal Care Utilization: Using Design Thinking to Drive Improvements in Birth Data Quality
Using Human Centered Design and Quality Improvement Strategies to Drive Health Innovations and Improve Outcomes
News
Project 360: Supporting Families Before, During and After Disaster
By Jessica Ayala When wildfires rage, power grids fail or heat waves strike, most families worry about staying safe, but for pregnant individuals and new parents, the stakes are even higher. Disaster preparedness and response efforts often overlook the distinct and critical needs of these perinatal populations, leaving them especially vulnerable during emergencies. The consequences…
Global Communities Awarded $50,000 Grant to Expand Trafficking Prevention Program and Protect Vulnerable Youth in San Diego
San Diego, CA — Global Communities is proud to announce that it has been awarded a $50,000 grant from the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office Community Grant Program to expand Project ROOTS—an innovative and comprehensive prevention education initiative that addresses the root causes of gender-based violence, exploitation, and trafficking among vulnerable youth in San…
Innovation in Action: A Q&A with Radhika Bhavsar on Driving Positive Impact
By Maureen Simpson If you ask Radhika “Rad” Bhavsar, innovation is meant to be uncomfortable. Valuable breakthroughs and insights rarely come packaged without this necessary rite of passage; the key is trusting the process. “I think my life has always been trial and error, and through trial and error, you learn faster,” says Rad, who…