Renovation/Addition | Honor Award East New York Health Hub

SOURCES OF PUBLIC FINANCING The Institute for Community Living (ICL) was awarded $2 million through the NYS DOH DISRP program to enhance health services in underutilized communities. ICL submitted for the award and received funding to supplement the overall construction and design budget of the project for the East New York Health Hub. The $2 million represents just under 10% of the total project budget.

SUBMITTED BY Dattner Architects | New York, New York

Photo Credits: © Chris Cooper

Renovation/Addition | Honor Award East New York Health Hub | Brooklyn, New York

PROVIDING HEALTHCARE AND SOCIAL SERVICES IN AN UNDERSERVED NEIGHBORHOOD

A Neighborhood Beacon for Individual, Family, and Community Wellness.

Located on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn’s East New York neighborhood, the transformation of this turn-of-the-century structure allows a growing non-profit to provide essential healthcare and social services in an underserved neighborhood. The addition and gut renovation expanded existing operations from 9,000 to 45,000 square feet, allowing the Institute for Community Living (ICL) to create a one-stop-shop community health facility for mental and physical wellbeing. The design approach creates synergy between programs by consolidating ICL’s extensive existing outreach, mental health service, and family support into one facility and co-locating a new health center operated by non-profit partner Community Healthcare Network. The architecture encourages physical and mental healing through visual connections to both nature and the community. Garden and terrace spaces, framed views, and access to light and air reinforce the link to the surrounding environment. The three-story building is composed of two interlocking volumes legible from the exterior. The first is a two-story communal volume, expressed in a corduroy-like red brick pattern. Atop this sits a two-story office volume, distinct from the lower volume by its setback, materiality, and its size and rhythm of fenestration. The approach to East New York Health Hub’s interior is to celebrate the industrial architectural attributes of the existing context and the contrast of the modern addition. Polished concrete floors contrast with bold colors throughout the spaces, creating energetic and inspiring public gathering spaces for the clients and community. The industrial character is the framework for the interior design inspiration — exposed brick and large arched openings enhance the charm of the open office spaces.

Many that walk through the doors of ICL have experienced trauma. ICL believes it to be essential for the building interior to give physical form to the trauma-informed principles that are the foundation of ICL’s service model: safety, trust, collaboration, and empowerment. The main entry opens into a large light-filled lobby that invites users to choose the services they want. The free flow of the building lobby and circulation encourages people to move through the building and not cluster in crowds that can make users feel unsafe. Collaboration is facilitated by proximately locating programs that serve many of the same people to encourage staff interaction, which is best exemplified by the adjacent location of NYS-licensed mental health and health clinics that share a front desk and waiting room. What is the greater social value of the project? The Institute for Community Living (ICL) — one of New York’s largest behavioral health agencies — with its partner Community Healthcare Network (CHN), is pioneering a radically different approach at the East New York Health Hub, by showcasing a holistic paradigm for delivering healthcare to underserved local communities. Located in a healthcare “desert” in Central Brooklyn near the low-income neighborhoods of East New York, Brownsville, and Cypress Hills, the Health Hub is designed to address the health challenges of people of all ages who face poverty, violence, and social isolation.

Built in a low-income neighborhood with few community amenities, this renovation and addition is a neighborhood beacon for individual, family, and community wellness. To build resilience and overcome the stigma of seeking treatment for a mental health or substance abuse problems, ICL strategically co-locates a continuum of behavioral health services with ambulatory medical care, parenting and youth supports, and help with basic needs like housing, food, and employment. The services under one roof empowers community residents to address their most urgent priorities, from seeking help on food security issues to guidance on approaching behavioral challenges for their children. The Health Hub builds on groundbreaking research that shows good health is more than just a function of medical care. A model for overcoming health disparities in NYC and elsewhere, the Health Hub seeks to address these challenging lifestyle determinants by providing the resources necessary to overcome past traumas and reinforce healthy behaviors. Through new investments in vulnerable communities, integrated behavioral and medical care offered in the same place where people can address hunger, unemployment, and homelessness, while building social supports, offers promise for improving community health. The East New York Health Hub is a model for the future.

How does the project contribute to the life of its surrounding community? The ICL’s East New York Health Hub opened in 2018, serving over 4,000 people of all ages annually, with 25% using multiple services. Despite serving communities with some of the worst health outcomes in NYC, including the second highest rate of psychiatric hospitalization and the highest rate of preventable diabetes hospitalization, ICL is accomplishing its goals to empower clients to play a strong role in their own healthcare. Today, 97% of the people using the Health Hub believe they can make changes to improve their physical and mental health. In a June 2019 City Limits publication, Bishop Steve Belgrove, Pastor at Brownville’s His Majesty International Fellowship, described the support provided by ICL and their primary healthcare partner CHN, as an essential resource for a healing community: “In addition to their extensive mental healthcare, ICL brings together mental health with physical healthcare in the hub through its medical partner, Community Healthcare Network. They also offer connections to other resources that address the housing, food scarcity, unemployment and more that cause distress to so many of our neighbors. That’s exactly what we need: a trusted partner in the community that can provide culturally competent, mental health services. In East New York, Cypress Hills, Brownsville and beyond, that partner is ICL. All communities, particularly low-income communities of color plagued by so many problems, need this kind of partner. Only together—a partnership between clergy, the community, and competent and caring mental health and health providers, will we get our people well.” n