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Note: This article is cross-posted on APHA’s Healthiest Cities and Counties Challenge Communities4Health blog and Healthy Places by Design’s blog.

The Healthiest Cities and Counties Challenge produced some fascinating successes during its two-year run, spearheaded by four national partners including our two organizations. A few recent highlights of the initiative to reduce local disparities in food and healthcare access in local communities are:

• Student-led better food in local New Brunswick schools. The New Brunswick, NJ project team, led by Elijah’s Promise, launched the Your Food, Your Choice student internship program to improve the food served in local public schools. The program was designed for New Brunswick High School students to learn about food systems within their school and community. Students surveyed peers and their families about the quality served in school and worked with the nutrition and cafeteria staff to include more culturally significant menu items, increase access to drinking water, and develop school gardens.
• Connected residents to food and health services in rural Pennsylvania. In Cambria County, Pennsylvania, the 1889 Foundation and its partners developed a “HUB” model to better coordinate systems of care with social service and healthcare providers. Organizers trained and deployed community health workers to connect residents to food and health services. To date, they’ve successfully trained multiple 1889 Jefferson Center for Population Health staff and residents to become community health worker certified trainers, expanding their reach and the HUB infrastructure within and outside of Cambria County.
• The nation's first joint county-military food policy council in NC. In Cumberland County, NC, the Department of Public Health and its partners sought to advance policy, systems, and environmental change to decrease inequities throughout the county and among military families at Fort Bragg, a US Army base. The team focused on local residents and conducted a food system assessment, which led them to develop the nation’s first joint county-military food policy council. The council will focus on improving transportation to healthy food sources, improving communication of food resources to citizens, volunteers, and food providers, and expanding the use of WIC/EBT to farmer’s markets and other food markets for the 56,000 residents who are food insecure.

How it worked

The initiative was the result of a partnership among Healthy Places by Design, the American Public Health Association, the Aetna Foundation (an independent charitable affiliate of CVS Health), and the National Association of Counties. It ran from spring 2020 until recently, overlapping the height of the pandemic and its unprecedented rates of food insecurity and worsening health disparities. Aetna Foundation and its partners awarded 10 cities and 10 counties with $100,000 over a two-year period. Lead agencies were non-profit organizations, academic institutions, and local governments and used the investment to work across disciplines and alongside residents and local leaders to improve health and wellbeing in their communities.

“Solutions and wisdom are abundant in communities,” said Lead Director of Community Impact and Philanthropic Partnerships at CVS Health Amy Clark. “The initiative had value for our participants and embodied a respectful and humble stance respective to community voice. And it is very exciting to see that so many projects are ending on a high note, whether it be receiving new grant funding, cementing a new partnership, or achieving a policy milestone.”

Clark offered some final insights to project teams—and organizers of other communities—as they continue their equity work: “Stay curious about how community change happens, and don’t be overwhelmed by all the work that you don’t control,” she said. “Focus on what you can influence today, and eventually you will see that your daily decisions have moved you into a space you could have never imagined a year ago.”