The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has honored Bowen graduate Amy Johnson as one of 10 recipients of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Community Health Leaders Award for 2012.
As the first executive director of the Arkansas Access to Justice Commission, Johnson works to help low-income Arkansans overcome legal barriers that perpetuate poverty. In that role, she has helped raise more than $2.1 million to support the provision of free legal aid to low-income people. She also served on an advisory committee that oversaw the formation of the state’s first hospital-based medical-legal partnership.
“There is a real overlap between health and legal issues, especially in Arkansas, where it is a crime not to pay your rent, but there is no warranty of habitability,” said Johnson. “That means you can be required to pay rent on a place that is not livable. It may be infested with mold that inflames your asthma, or it may have faulty wiring that makes it impossible to operate the ventilator that you need to breathe.”
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Community Health Leaders Award honors exceptional men and women who have overcome significant obstacles to tackle some of the most challenging health and health care problems facing their communities. Johnson received the award during a ceremony in San Antonio on Oct. 17.
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has honored more than 200 Community Health Leaders since 1993. The work of the nine other 2012 recipients includes culturally appropriate care for Native Alaskan elders; a program to prevent and treat cancer among medically underserved populations in South Carolina’s Low Country region; an initiative to connect refugees to mental- health services in Seattle; a breast cancer awareness and treatment program for African immigrants in the Washington, D.C., area; a community initiative to reduce opioid abuse and drug overdoses in Wilkes County, N.C.; a project to promote healthy lifestyles and working conditions for immigrant workers in Los Angeles; an initiative to prevent childhood obesity in Garfield, N.J.; support services for Latino survivors of sexual violence in Philadelphia, and an outreach program to assist older adults living at home in California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains.
Johnson is featured on the foundation’s website.
