NJHI’s First Communities Moving to Action Coalitions Celebrate and Look to Their Future Building a Culture of Health
Building a Culture of Health at the community level requires collaboration, and as the statewide grantmaking program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, New Jersey Health Initiatives’ (NJHI) Communities Moving to Action initiative funded 20 community-focused, cross-sector coalitions to develop long-term solutions to give residents an opportunity to thrive. Read more about these awards here.
From Irvington, Morristown and Orange to Camden and Atlantic City, this cohort of grantees and their partners have worked over the past four years to build trust and leverage their communities’ assets to move toward health equity. As the funding to these coalitions through NJHI concludes this month, these grantees gathered to celebrate their accomplishments and share their plans for moving forward.
In the Pecha Kucha style, each grantee told the story of their community, including milestones reached and lessons learned in their work. Joined by their fellow Communities Moving to Action, Round 2 colleagues as well as key NJHI partners from the Center for Creative Leadership, Data Across Sectors for Health, NJ Community Capital, Sustainable Jersey, NJ Healthy Communities Network and the Reinvestment Fund, our grantees collaborated across cohorts and communities to serve as peer consultants for addressing topics such as Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), keeping partners committed, increasing data sharing and other community priorities. In addition, they applied Breakthrough Thinking principles to envision what they could address collectively for statewide impact.
We thank the New Jersey Department of Health and Commissioner Shereef Elnahal, in addition to RWJF Program Officer Cathy Malone for their support of our Communities Moving to Action grantees. We are confident that the work they have championed will continue well into the future and shape and inform the healthy communities field. The selection of Jersey City and Perth Amboy as finalists for the 2019 RWJF Culture of Health Prize is an exciting recognition of New Jersey stakeholders partnering around a shared commitment to health, opportunity and equity.