Health POWER
The Health POWER (People Organizing and Working for Equitable Results) funding initiative, supports the Center for Prevention’s new strategy to build community capacity and is designed to strengthen leadership development, invest in community-led solutions, and create collaborations to advance local PSE change.
We’re excited to announce our newest funding initiative to support this strategy. The Center’s first Health POWER cohort includes 13 diverse community-based organizations and 2 Tribal communities.
They’ve proposed bold ideas that will promote leadership development, community-led solutions, and collaborations to advance policy, systems and environmental change.
Project name: Equitable Development Principles and Scorecard – Livability and Physical Activity
Our project centers on the Equitable Development Principles and Scorecard (Scorecard), which was created with leaders from low-wealth communities and communities of color to ensure that the principles and practices of equitable development, environmental justice, and affordability are applied in all communities as they plan for economic development and wealth creation. We propose to work with communities to add a livability principle that promotes physical activity through safe, inclusive, and healing environments and practices, and then to work with communities to implement the tool to achieve better health outcomes in communities across the region.
American Lung Association in Minnesota
Project name: The Lung Mind Alliance: Forward with Policy Systems Environment (PSE) Change
Through the Lung Mind Alliance, we will increase the number of mental health and substance use disorder treatment organizations that implement tobacco treatment and tobacco-free grounds. We will develop 3 new action teams that reflect current Minnesota needs and opportunities.
PSE strategies will include:
- Increasing buy-in and capacity for change in new segments of the mental health and substance use disorder treatment profession
- Partnering with mental health and substance use disorder treatment organizations to implement new treatment protocols and grounds policies
- Identifying, then pursuing, system changes to improve reimbursement for tobacco treatment
- Engaging new partners to support a statewide policy establishing tobacco-free environments in all Minnesota mental health and substance use disorder treatment settings.
- Monthly action team meetings and semiannual convenings
Project name: YTOP Fresh
YTOP Fresh will be Appetite For Change’s effort to intentionally and meaningfully intertwine our Youth Training & Opportunity Program (YTOP) with our Northside Fresh Coalition (NSFresh) initiative. NSFresh has assisted AFC in achieving our goal of increasing access to local and real food in North Minneapolis, while providing training and leadership development opportunities for community members. YTOP is improving youth emotional and social well-being and providing leadership development opportunities within Appetite For Change. This project will weave together these efforts in order to more directly involve AFC youth in the PSE work of NSFresh while also engaging more young people in this movement.
Association for NonSmokers-Minnesota
Project name: Don’t Discount My Life: Point of Sale Tobacco Prevention Strategies in Saint Paul and Ramsey County
With this funding, ANSR will work to 1) pass a policy to regulate how tobacco prices are discounted in the City of Saint Paul or another Ramsey County city; 2) pass at least one policy that regulates the sale of flavored tobacco (including menthol) and/or raises the tobacco sales age to 21 in Ramsey County cities; 3) continue building capacity with community organizations and individuals to lead advocacy activities and campaigns; 4) maintain and establish relationships with elected officials and municipal staff in our project area to ensure elected officials adopt best-practice tobacco prevention policies.
Communidades Latinas Unidas En Servicio (CLUES)
Project name: CLUES Healthy Eating Community Garden and Action Cohort
CLUES proposes using a community garden cohort model to enhance healthy eating access, as a platform for building social connection, and to advance leadership to advocate for PSE change in the food system. The proposed project will engage Latinos on the East Side through the creation of a multigenerational community garden and participation in a healthy eating action cohort. The healthy eating action cohort will convene the community gardeners and their families for mutual education and preservation of cultural traditions and knowledge around food, gardening, advocacy, and the development of participant’s leadership.
Project name: Tribal NEAR Science and Community Wisdom Project: Improving the Health of Tribal Communities through Community-Led Actions Promoting Holistic Wellness
For this project, FamilyWise will partner with tribal communities to strengthen shared understandings of trauma and promote a holistic view of health. We will support and complement existing efforts to improve wellness – including healthy eating, physical activity, and commercial tobacco cessation initiatives – by co-creating community health events, providing educational workshops, and facilitating conversations about childhood and historical trauma as social determinants of health. We will also help communities cultivate parent leadership and engage those most impacted by health problems in creating solutions. When people understand trauma, they choose healthier, more compassionate policies and practices that support individual and community wellness.
Project name: Food shelves as change agents: Bringing food justice values to the charitable food system in Minnesota
The Food Group will build the capacity of key food shelf partners to advance racial equity within their organizations’ policies, systems, and environments. In year one, a small cohort of food shelf leaders will complete a ten-month curriculum covering such topics as: food systems change, the impact of race on hunger within Minnesota’s food system, leadership and advocacy skills, community engagement, and strategies to promote healthy eating. Based on what they learn, cohort members will establish equity-related goals and receive coaching and financial support to implement those goals in collaboration with those they serve.
Hmong American Farmers Association
Project name: Addressing health disparities and food access for low-income, refugee and immigrant children in ethnic daycare centers
We plan to adapt our Veggie Rx model and work with the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) and the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) (which licenses daycare centers) to launch a project where HAFA and our partners identify and work with daycare centers owned by women of color. We plan to provide them with CSA shares, host trainings and provide technical support to enroll in the CACFP program. Each year, we will improve and expand the number of centers we are working with, but our hope is to engage over 50 centers, and eventually, make this part of the licensing process.
Project name: Leech Lake Family Spirit EmPOWERment
The Leech Lake Family Spirit Program will combat the issue of commercial tobacco use and secondhand smoke during/after pregnancy by presenting educational and cultural material to expecting mothers and caregivers. These presentations will discuss the cultural and traditional uses of tobacco in ceremonies and prayer, along with visual demonstrations of the health risks associated with tobacco use.
We will address healthy eating and physical activity by teaching participants how to garden, construct a greenhouse, gather medicine, harvest wild rice, tap and finish maple syrup, promote breastfeeding, increase the program’s cultural physical activities; teaching participants to live sustainable, cultural, and healthy lives.
Lower Sioux Indian Community in the State of Minnesota, a federally recognized Indian tribe
Project name: Lower Sioux Healthy Generations Initiative
Our goal, with support from the Health POWER Funding Initiative, is to break down barriers and increase supports for healthy behaviors at Lower Sioux. To reach our goal, we will leverage prior community-wide strategic planning work and the upcoming Lower Sioux Intergenerational Cultural Incubator, an opportunity for new space to include cultural sharing and learning activities and healthy activities identified by the community members. We will implement a worksite wellness program at Lower Sioux, increase community member participation in healthy activities, and enact a workplace wellness statement and policy.
Lincoln Park Children and Families Collaborative
Project name: Supporting a PSE Coalition in the Lincoln Park Neighborhood
We will organize a canvassing of the Lincoln Park neighborhood that would include door-to-door one-on-one conversations, group conversations, and community meetings. We hope to hear from as many community members as possible about issues that are important to them and invite them to join a coalition that we’ll build together to address issues that are connected to physical activity, healthy eating, and reducing commercial tobacco use. We will provide trainings related to community organizing for coalition members that build strong leadership in the Lincoln Park neighborhood that will result in a variety of PSE change.
Project name: From Food Insecurity to Food Sovereignty: Community Connections for Health Equity in Northfield
Main Street Project provides land access, advocates for policy change and supports immigrants, predominantly Latinx, in Dakota/Rice counties to impact healthy food access. Community Connectors from constituent neighborhoods engage in community dialogue, organize policy change for increased healthy food access and connect their communities to bilingual resources at the MSP farm. Project goals for PSE change: increase LandShare participation by 75 percent, establish three neighborhood gardens at mobile home parks and apartment complexes, increase public transportation options, remove a two-bag limit on buses, and work with the city to establish a neighborhood farmers market to serve the immigrant community.
Northpoint Health and Wellness
Project name: Anti-Tobacco Policy Advocacy at NorthPoint
With this funding, NorthPoint and partners will work to pass a policy that regulates how tobacco prices are discounted in Minneapolis and/or surrounding suburbs; pass at least one policy that bans the sale of flavored tobacco (including menthol); continue building capacity with key partners, community organizations and individuals to lead advocacy activities and campaigns; and maintain and establish relationships with elected officials and municipal staff in our project area to ensure elected officials adopt best-practice tobacco prevention policies.
Project name: Community-led systems change for equitable active transportation
Our goal is to achieve systems change in the planning, design and implementation of transportation projects in Minneapolis. We will plan a citywide community organizing campaign to center and amplify the voices of those of us who have historically been left out of the transportation decision-making process. Our campaign will work to convince decision-makers to adopt transportation planning and design practices that put people first. We will advocate for creating transportation systems that promote active transportation, reduce social inequity and create better health outcomes.
For the first phase of our campaign, we will focus on communities that border Hennepin County streets within Minneapolis. These streets are disproportionately home to people of color, have inadequate active transportation infrastructure and are therefore more likely to foster diabetes and cardiovascular disease, and have higher rates of traffic crashes.
Project name: Healthy Community Schoolyards in the Twin Cities
As part of our Community-Powered Parks program, The Trust for Public Land is developing a Healthy Community Schoolyards program that will transform school grounds – often consisting of empty fields – into multi-functional schoolyards for students and local communities. Working closely with residents, schools, school districts, local partners, and government entities, we will first focus on community engagement and design for one site in St. Paul and then initiate four additional pilot projects to later be replicated throughout the Twin Cities metro. Through these community-embraced Healthy Community Schoolyards, we will promote health equity and increase opportunities for physical activity, helping to reduce preventable disease.
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THE HEALTH POWER COHORT
We’re especially excited that the Health POWER funded organizations will come together regularly as a cohort to network, share successes and challenges, and identify opportunities to collaborate with peers in their community work. Learn more about the members of the first Health POWER cohort.