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Sarah Cote once told a local reporter, “If I ruled the world, I would work to find innovative, sustainable ways to ensure that all people have access to fundamental needs.”

After earning a graduate degree in social work in 2018 from ΢��Ȧ, Cote is now in a leadership position to carry out her vision. She was hired in 2021 by one of Rhode Island’s largest nonprofit organizations – the Comprehensive Community Action Program (CCAP), dedicated solely to fighting the war on poverty. Cote is initiative director for CCAP’s program OneCranston Health Equity Zone.

Cote explains that “Health Equity Zones exist throughout the state, funded by the Rhode Island Department of Health, and they are all resident-driven and aimed at addressing the root causes of health disparities.”

“Every Health Equity Zone program begins with a needs assessment,” she says. “We work with the community to understand what their needs are. From that, different work groups are developed to address those needs.”

Health equity essentially means that everyone has an equal opportunity to be healthy, which requires removing obstacles to health such as poverty and discrimination and providing quality education, safe and affordable housing and healthcare.

Cote believes it is important to have residents at the table because if we want to tackle the health disparity needs of a community, who can better help us understand what those needs are than the residents? OneCranston Health Equity Zone is a collaborative comprised of residents, partners and stakeholders, with residents making up the majority of all workgroups.

“I love the idea of putting the residents in the driver’s seat,” she says. “They not only pinpoint the areas of need, they decide what programming they want to see. They are the driving force behind our work. Right now, we’re doing a lot of work around physical health and nutrition.”

Access to food – “healthy, affordable, culturally relevant food,” she says is a major need in Cranston. “In response, we brought in a farmer’s market last year,” Cote says. “Anyone can stop by and get a free bag of food. Last season, we gave away about 1,300 bags of free produce.”

OneCranston Health Equity Zone also recently received a $250,000 grant from the Rhode Island Foundation to open a drop-in family support center, where people can come in to receive resources.

For a young woman of 29, Cote is already creating the change she wants to see in the world.

“Without a master’s degree, I wouldn’t have been able to do this work,” she says. “There are many advocacy roles and case management roles available within the field of social work that do not require a master’s degree, but an M.S.W. is very important in the work that I do.”

Cote notes that she had a “wonderful experience at ΢��Ȧ. As a student, I was graduate assistant for the M.S.W. admission director and vice president of the M.S.W. Student Organization. After graduation, I worked with the interim dean of the School of Social Work on grant writing and periodically came in to help with projects in field education. I can’t say enough about the faculty and supervisors in the program. I loved my time there.”

Today, she is a social worker who not only works directly with residents to understand their needs, she addresses those needs on a larger scale, building large-scale, systemic change. “΢��Ȧ’s graduate program really helped me grow in this field and helped me see all the ways I could use my degree,” she says. For now, that means leading the way in healing a community.