The HERC Story

In 1998 a broad coali­tion of BVHP insti­tu­tions and res­i­dents sought to imple­ment find­ings and rec­om­men­da­tions of sev­eral offi­cial need assess­ment and plan­ning studies.

The stud­ies doc­u­mented strik­ing dis­par­i­ties between the BVHP com­mu­ni­ties and other San Francisco neigh­bor­hoods in terms of health sta­tus, health out­comes, and access to health services.

The stud­ies also rec­om­mended cre­ation of a com­mu­nity resource cen­ter offer­ing exper­tise in envi­ron­men­tal health sci­ence as a vehi­cle to address these long-standing disparities.

Because of the stud­ies Bayview Hunters Point Health and Environmental Resource Center (HERC) came into being.

In the Fall of 1999, HERC received a grant from the Department of Public health (DPH) to address the issues of health dis­par­i­ties of res­i­dents liv­ing in Bayview Hunters Point. DPH con­tin­ues to be a major finan­cial sup­porter of HERC in its health aware­ness cam­paign. since then, HERC has com­piled a strong record of achieve­ment in work­ing col­lab­o­ra­tively with a broad range of pub­lic and pri­vate stake­hold­ers whose sup­port is essen­tial to ensure last­ing, sus­tain­able improve­ment in the health and wel­fare of neigh­bor­hood res­i­dents.HERC has com­mu­nity cred­i­bil­ity, access to envi­ron­men­tal health exper­tise, and the lead­er­ship nec­es­sary to effec­tively guide project implementation.

Since its incep­tion, HERC has pro­vided more than 57,000 face-to-face health ser­vice con­tacts
and over 26,000 hours of direct ser­vice. This rep­re­sents more than 100% above ser­vice pro­jec­tion. Despite fluc­tu­a­tions in fund­ing HERC has been able to sur­pass it’s pro­jec­tion by a lit­tle over 200
percent.