Healthy Kids, Healthy Communities: Supporting community action to prevent childhood obesity

Healthy Kids, Healthy Communities is a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) that focuses on systems, policies and environmental strategies to support healthy eating and active living, especially among children who are at highest risk for obesity. Healthy Kids, Healthy Communities will work with up to 100 local community partnerships across the country to help them increase opportunities for physical activity and improve access to affordable healthy foods for children and families. This initiative will advance RWJF's efforts to reverse the childhood obesity epidemic by 2015. The program is directed by Active Living by Design.

The overall objectives of the Healthy Kids, Healthy Communities program are to:

1) provide funding, tools and assistance to help up to 100 communities sustain systems, policies and environmental changes that support healthy eating and active living, especially among children who are at highest risk for obesity;

2) collaborate with other RWJF-funded initiatives to help drive wide-scale change;

3) support experienced local leaders who will serve as ambassadors and mentors for communities that are working to prevent childhood obesity;

4) apply research findings and evaluation results to help communities implement the most effective strategies for increasing physical activity and improving nutrition for kids; and

5) inform the policy debate on childhood obesity by sharing insight about initiatives with the greatest potential for wide-scale change that will help to reverse the epidemic.

Grants for Leading Sites

This targeted call for proposals (CFP) is now closed.  It will award approximately 10 grants for Healthy Kids, Healthy Communities leading sites, each of which will receive up to $400,000 total for up to four years.

Leading site grantees are expected to build on their communities' achievements to date and leverage their experience to address systems, policies and environments to effect large-scale change. Strategies that aim to increase opportunities for healthy eating and active living should consider how social, institutional and cultural supports and barriers impact these behaviors. Creating large-scale change will require public health initiatives to work across various sectors and professional disciplines. For this reason, RWJF seeks to fund communities that will use a comprehensive approach.

Inquiries

Please direct inquiries regarding programmatic issues to: info@healthykidshealthycommunities.org. Please reference "HKHC CFP" in the subject line.

If you have technical questions related to the RWJF Grantmaking Online system, please send an e-mail with the subject line "HKHC tech help" to techinfo@healthykidshealthycommunities.org or call (919) 843-3124.