Healthy eating, active living, and healthy minds and spirits: Community partnership strategies for child health

In Colorado’s Weld County, organizations from all sectors of the economy are participating in a campaign to attain and exceed Healthy 2020 goals and yield a sustainable surge in community-wide prosperity.

“Make TODAY Count!,” the calendar-driven culture change campaign led by the North Colorado Health Alliance, identifies education as the key non-medical determinant of population health and involves community partners across all sectors in cultivating structured layers of extracurricular support for the efforts of area schools. In addition to the campaign’s child health initiatives regarding healthy eating and active living, parent-school engagement initiatives and other school-support efforts undertaken in multi-sector partnerships with Weld County school districts also aim to cultivate healthy minds and spirits by: 1) improving literacy and graduation rates, 2) enhancing linkages between students and sustainable local employment and continuing education, and 3) cultivating a multi-generational local citizenry that is engaged in personal and community self-governance.

By integrating services, assuming shared responsibility for providing care for the entire regional population, and engaging in mobile outreach, traditional health partners (public health department, hospital, FQHC, behavioral health organizations) operating together within the Alliance since 2002 have been able to go far towards reaching the goal of one hundred percent access to care, even for the underserved. Deliberate expansion of partnerships in recent years reflects the understanding that the broader mission of achieving a healthy population can only be realized by integrating the work of traditional health partners with the cooperative efforts of education, business, government, community service and faith-based organizations.