For more than a decade now I have been writing copy for the annual community report for the Brandywine Health Foundation, a dynamic nonprofit devoted to improving the health and well-being of the residents of the Coatesville, Pa., area—a hard-luck but resilient post-steel mill town that is an anomaly in one of the nation’s richest counties, Chester County.

This year’s report focuses on new efforts to provide mental health training to a wide array of school staff members and interested community members so that they can identify the signs of youths in crisis and refer them to the help they need. It also highlights the foundation’s support of several programs that are trying to eradicate racial birth disparities—disparities in which African American women are twice as likely as Caucasian and Hispanic women to give birth to low-weight babies.

To prepare the report, I worked closely with the foundation’s administrators and the graphic designer with whom I always prepare the report, Amy Pollack (www.twistnshout.com), to brainstorm and pull the report together. Besides interviewing various sources and writing the two main stories, I interviewed and profiled three groups of donors and volunteers; helped Frances M. Sheehan, the foundation’s president and CEO, to shape the annual message from her and the outgoing and incoming board chairs and helped edit other copy.

Besides posting the entire report on its website, the foundation also has posted two lead stories as separate online stories.

Click here to view the BHF 2015 Community Report.