Healthy People, Healthy Places: Building community capacity to improve health and safety

Where people live, work, learn, and play significantly impacts their health. People thrive when they live in communities with walkable and bikeable streets, safe parks and playgrounds, grocery stores selling healthy foods and beverages, and neighbors who know each other. However, in communities plagued by violence, strategies to promote health and well-being often do not have maximum impact. Particularly, food and activity advocates and practitioners are increasingly noting that violence undermines the effectiveness of their efforts. Individual funders have engaged in discrete initiatives to create access to healthy foods and physical activity. Based on the notion that “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts,” the Healthy Eating Active Living Convergence Partnership, a national collaboration among funders, formed in order to maximize their collective impact. Together, the Partnership catalyzes innovative, multi-field efforts among other funders, practitioners, and advocates to change policies and environments to achieve a vision of healthy people living in healthy places. Its core values are grounded in equity and social justice. The Partnership recognizes the importance of addressing violence concerns. In January 2010, they launched a pilot project in six communities across the country to explore the effectiveness of community-based approaches to improve healthy eating and activity living by minimizing/eliminating the effects of community violence. This presentation will share an innovative funding approach that supports coordination and connections across multiple fields and sectors to advance knowledge, resource sharing, and policy and environmental change to build a national movement towards healthy people in healthy places.