Our environments determine our health.

People thrive when they earn living wages and live in communities with parks and playgrounds, grocery stores selling nutritious food, and neighbors who know one another. Without a healthy environment, people are more likely to suffer from obesity or one of the many chronic diseases plaguing the United States: diabetes, asthma, and heart disease.

Preventing disease and creating healthy neighborhoods requires change in both the food environment - including how food is grown, processed, distributed, and sold - and the physical environment - from how neighborhoods are built to the transportation systems that serve them. There is widespread recognition that physical and food environments are inextricably linked, and that - together - they can foster or inhibit our ability to eat well and thrive.

Advocates from various fields are beginning to see how their work can enhance progress in other fields, and how their efforts can foster policy and environmental changes that help families and children lead healthier lives.

The Healthy Eating Active Living Convergence Partnership also recognizes that to improve food and activity environments, existing disparities must be addressed. Therefore, the Partnership aims to strenghten and accelerate collaborative efforts among practitioners, policymakers, funders, and advocates to support healthy eating and active living.

The Convergence Partnership will send out periodic updates on new publications and program developments. Go to the Contact Us page to sign up to receive these updates or to submit questions about the Partnership.

 

 

The Healthy Eating, Active Living Convergence Partnership invites local and regional grant making foundations to submit proposals that will support new projects or new grant making initiatives involving multi-field community partnerships aimed at enhancing the land use/built environment and/or expanding food access efforts in order to improve health and equity. The Fund provides 50% matching dollars, up to $100,000 per year, for a two-year period. The goal is to engage foundations in creating robust and sustainable support for multi-field, policy and environmental change efforts emphasizing equity and community partnership. Potential applicants are invited to attend an informational teleconference call on Thursday, May 21, 2009. To learn more details about this opportunity, please go to our Strategies Page and click on Activities and Investments.

 

 

 

 

 

Prevention & Wellness Memo
PolicyLink and the Prevention Institute have co-written and released a memo for the Obama administration with recommendations on how prevention and wellness funds in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act can maximize health and equity benefits for all. To read the Prevention and Wellness memo, click here.
 

Transportation & Health Toolkit
The impacts of transportation policy on health are well-documented. Traffic crashes, air pollution, physical inactivity, limited access to healthy foods and medical care are only some of the ways transportation impacts health. The toolkit includes presentations from leading experts, data on transportations impact on health, local case studies, policy recommendations and advocacy opportunities.  Click here to access the Transportation & Health Toolkit

Healthy People, Healthy Places: Directions for Improving Community, Individual, and Economic Health - Memo to Obama Transition Team
With a new administration comes the opportunity to re-envision the best ways to advance our nation's health and well-being. Prevention Institute and PolicyLink -- engaged by the Healthy Eating, Active Living Convergence Partnership -- have identified clear pathways -- from promoting transportation strategies supportive of health to addressing the need for comprehensive violence prevention -- and presented them in a memo (pdf version) to the transition team of President Obama.  Click here to access the memo on Change.gov.