National Public Radio’s Laura Starecheski reports on an unlikely partnership. Dr. Nancy Hardt (above right) joined with Alachua County Sheriff Sadie Darnell (left) to decrease childhood trauma in Gainesville, Florida.

Starecheski says that Hardt was changed by some research she was coming across:

The research shows that kids who have tough childhoods — because of poverty, abuse, neglect or witnessing domestic violence, for instance — are actually more likely to be sick when they grow up. They’re more likely to get diseases like asthma, diabetes and heart disease. And they tend to have shorter lives than people who haven’t experienced those difficult events as kids.

Wanting to go beyond a “patient-by-patient” approach, in 2008 Hardt looked at a map made from Medicaid records that showed where children were born into poverty. When she noticed an intense concentration in a small area, she began asking people, including Sheriff Darnell, about that particular neighborhood. Darnell had a similar map showing high crime rates in the exact same area. The pair noticed low-income housing projects, lack of businesses, churches and medical care.

Dr. Hardt was able to work on the last one of those by developing a mobile health clinic, a bus that roamed the various gathering spots in the one-mile area.

Then, noting that “he crime in the hotspot included the highest concentration of domestic violence, child abuse and neglect,” Dr. Hardt was reminded of “her original mission — to head off bad health outcomes in the most vulnerable kids.”

So she teamed up with Sheriff Darnell and other local groups and grass-roots organizers from the neighborhood. They collaborated to create the SWAG (Southwest Advocacy Group) Family Resource Center, right in the Linton Oaks apartment complex.

The SWAG Center opened in 2012. Kids can come play all day long. There’s a food pantry, free meals, a computer room, AA meetings. A permanent health clinic is slated to open up across the street next week.

All the resources here are designed to decrease the likelihood of abuse and neglect by strengthening families.

“I think we knew it intuitively — that health issues are associated with crime, [and] crime is associated with health issues and poverty,” Darnell says. “But seeing that direct connection literally on a map … it helped to break down a lot of walls.”

Read and listen to the full story here.

Photos: Bryan Thomas for National Public Radio.