The BUILD Health Challenge welcomes 19 new communities that will embark on a two-year endeavor to transform health locally.
Funder resources totaling $8 million will support multi-sector local partnerships in each community aimed at addressing a variety of upstream factors such as transportation planning, quality of housing, and workplace tobacco policies to improve community health. In addition, each community selected has identified local hospital partners that will collectively add more than $5 million in both monetary and in-kind support to the project.
The communities selected are:
- Avondale Children Thrive (Cincinnati, OH) – Children’s health
- Bridging Health and Safety in Near Northside (Houston, TX) – Safe communities
- BUILD Health Aurora (Aurora, CO) – Children’s health
- Building Uplifted Families (Charlotte, NC) – Safe communities
- Cleveland Healthy Home Data Collaborative (Cleveland, OH) – Healthy housing
- Collaborative Cottage Grove (Greensboro, NC) – Community revitalization
- Developing a Community-Driven Health Equity Data System to Enhance Resident Mobility (New Orleans, LA) – Transportation
- FLOURISH St. Louis: Improving Transportation Access to Help Mothers and Babies Thrive (St. Louis, MO) – Maternal and child health
- Forward, Franklin (Franklin Borough, NJ) – Safe communities
- Healthy Homes Des Moines (Des Moines, IA) – Healthy housing
- Healthy Together Medical-Legal Partnership for Improving Asthma in Southeast DC (Washington, DC) – Medical-legal
- Home Preservation Initiative for Healthy Living (Philadelphia, PA) – Healthy housing
- New Brunswick Healthy Housing Collaborative (New Brunswick, NJ) – Healthy housing
- One Northside Center for Lifting Up everyBody (Pittsburgh, PA) – Safe communities
- Project Detour (Colorado Springs, CO) – Addiction
- Raising of America Partnership Boulder County (Lafayette, CO) – Children’s health
- Reducing Tobacco Use Through Innovative Data Sharing and Creative Engagement Strategies (Covington and Gallatin Counties, KY) – Tobacco control
- Transforming Breastfeeding Culture in Mississippi (Jackson, MS) – Maternal and child health
- Trenton Transformation: A Safe & Healthy Corridor (Trenton, NJ) – Community revitalization
These projects have the potential to dramatically affect the health and wellness of their communities. Over the next two years, we will be sharing learnings, outcomes, and their story here on the BUILD blog.
“Everyone in America should have the opportunity to be healthy, and achieving this vision requires moving beyond prescriptions and pills—to upstream social, physical, and economic influences on health,” said Emily Yu, executive director of the BUILD Health Challenge. “It’s exciting to see how organizations, residents, and those outside of traditional health spaces, are embracing a shared sense of responsibility for community health. This shift in thinking and application of bold, localized, and data-driven approaches is transforming the future of health.”
The initial cohort of BUILD Health Challenge projects, launched in 2015, included 18 community partnerships. Already the project has yielded highly promising approaches such as home remodeling to improve indoor air quality and control childhood asthma; leveraging data to better understand patient needs and behaviors beyond the clinical setting to promote healthy lifestyles; reimagining food supply and distribution channels in communities to address food insecurity, and more.
“With health systems increasingly assuming financial risk for preventable admissions, our member organizations are seeking the best-practice playbook for collaborations to address community health factors. That is why we are all so excited about the new cohort of communities that will discover and create more BUILD breakthroughs,” said Robert Musslewhite, Chairman and CEO at The Advisory Board Company, one of the 12 BUILD Health Challenge funders.
The BUILD Health Challenge is made possible with the support of: The Advisory Board Company, the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina Foundation, the Colorado Health Foundation, the de Beaumont Foundation, the Episcopal Health Foundation, Interact for Health, The Kresge Foundation, Mid-Iowa Health Foundation, New Jersey Health Initiatives, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Telligen Community Initiative, and W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
