Frequently Asked Questions

For purposes of this program, we define a "leading site" as a municipality, county, district or region with a minimum population of 50,000 residents and a strong existing infrastructure of partners who:

1. have demonstrated leadership and success in achieving policy and environmental changes related to active living and healthy eating; and
2. are ready to implement broader scale changes.

RWJF invited several grant making organizations and grantees to nominate communities as potential leading sites for Healthy Kids, Healthy Communities. Nominating organizations were asked to share information about a community's strengths in key areas, including: leadership in achieving systems, policy and environmental change; demonstrated collaboration with neighborhood, local and/or statewide entities to work at the municipal, county, district and/or regional level; experience working effectively with and on behalf of populations at greatest risk for childhood obesity; experience and willingness to serve as ambassadors and share knowledge with other communities; and ability to manage a multidisciplinary initiative. RWJF reviewed all nominations and selected 15 communities to receive the CFP for leading sites.

Several organizations from each nominated community received an e-mail and a letter from RWJF indicating that their community was being invited to apply for this opportunity.  Thirteen (13) organizations applied as lead agencies and after a rigorous and competitive process, RWJF has funded the following nine (9) Healthy Kids, Healthy Communities Leading Sites from across the country:

• Baldwin Park, CA (California Center for Public Health Advocacy)
• Central Valley, CA (Central California Regional Obesity Prevention Program/U-C
• Fresno Foundation)
• Chicago, IL (Logan Square Neighborhood Association)
• Columbia, MO (PedNet Coalition)
• Louisville, KY (Louisville Metro Department of Public Health and Wellness)
• Oakland, CA (East Bay Asian Youth Center)
• Somerville, MA (City of Somerville)
• Seattle/King County, WA (King County Housing Authority)]
• Washington, DC (Summit Health Institute for Research and Education, Inc.)

Additional information regarding leading sites is available at www.healthykidshealthycommunities.org.

Project leaders and paid project staff of leading sites will be expected to participate in a learning network and to serve as ambassadors for Healthy Kids, Healthy Communities. Occasional activities may include mentoring grantees selected for this round of proposals, hosting learning visits and/or contributing to teleconferences, webcasts, strategy sessions, peer exchanges or professional development sessions.

There are no more call for proposals (CFP) open at this time.  Register here to receive future RWJF Childhood Obesity funding alerts.

This initiative awarded 50 grants for Healthy Kids, Healthy Communities sites. Under this round of funding, each of the 41 HKHC grantees receive up to $360,000 total for up to four years. The HKHC leading site grantees receive $400,000 total for up to four years.

Funding for the HKHC grantees began on December 15, 2009, and will end on December 14, 2013. Funding for the HKHC leading site grantees began on December 2, 2008 and will end on December 2, 2012.

The program is directed by the Healthy Kids, Healthy Communities National Program Office (NPO), which is part of Active Living By Design at the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, NC. This national program office will oversee the application review process and provide ongoing programmatic direction and technical assistance to Healthy Kids, Healthy Communities grantees.

Please visit the Foundation's Web site, www.rwjf.org, for more information about funding opportunities, interest areas, lessons learned from past grants and other information related to the mission and work of RWJF.

Read about RWJF's initiatives related to childhood obesity.

Sign up to receive future RWJF program announcements, including future funding alerts.

Technical assistance and consultation will be provided to each of the grantees by the Healthy Kids, Healthy Communities National Program Office. Additionally, more specialized assistance will be available on an as-needed basis from the RWJF National Center for Preventing Childhood Obesity in coordination with the national program office. In addition, project leaders and paid project staff will be expected to participate in a learning network with other Healthy Kids, Healthy Communities grantees and partnerships. Activities may include participating in teleconferences, Webcasts, strategy sessions, peer exchanges, conferences and/or professional development seminars and trainings.

For purposes of this grant, a community is defined as a municipality, county, district or region of any size. Although there is no minimum requirement for population size, initiatives that are focused at the neighborhood level would generally not be considered competitive.

Grantees are not expected to pursue state-level change. The focus of this initiative is on community change at the municipal, county, district or regional level. While state-level action is a vital part of sustainable change, it is outside of the scope of this grant program.

Yes. However, grantees should focus their efforts on communities rather than schools. Grantees may propose school-based initiatives that take place during non-school hours and have a clear connection to the broader community. The most competitive proposals would address school issues at the district level rather than in one particular school.

No, although grantees may achieve better integration, saturation and productivity if they focus on the same system or policy change, they should focus on whatever systems/policies make sense given their particular initiative and the goals they are trying to achieve.

RWJF is dedicated to improving access to healthy choices for children and families by changing policies, environments and social norms. Therefore, we generally do not support projects that provide only information or education.

Restrictions on the use of grant funds are consistent with the program's emphasis on changes to policy and environments. Some examples of these activities include: 1) policy advocacy that improves plans, siting and design standards, processes, maintenance or funding levels for park facilities, school grounds or transportation infrastructure; 2) efforts to bring grocery stores or farmers' markets to low-income neighborhoods; 3) efforts to improve and sustain the quality and maintenance of safe places for physical activity; 4) policy advocacy that helps generate new sources of funds or increases funding levels for recreation, after-school and health-promotion programs; 5) campaigns to leverage private support and/or engage the private market to support healthy eating or active living environments; 6) efforts to improve the availability of healthy foods in existing food outlets; 7) efforts to improve community safety for children; and 8) efforts to modify an existing policy, identify unintended consequences and other barriers to implementation, refine approaches and institutionalize change.

Healthy Kids, Healthy Communities considers the integration of policy and environmental approaches with individually focused health-promotion strategies an important strategy for supporting families and children. It encourages partnerships to identify these programs and resources in the community and seek to integrate them where opportunities exist.

Many effective advocacy approaches do not involve direct lobbying for or against specific, actionable legislation or specific candidates currently running for office. Some of these approaches include (but are not limited to): 1) efforts to influence community plans, procedures, guidelines, rules and practices within and among government agencies that do not require a vote by a publicly elected body; 2) engagement and education of the public and elected officials about an issue; advocacy training for volunteers; and 3) media advocacy. The prohibition against lobbying only applies to activities supported by Foundation funds; grantees are free to lobby with their own resources or with unrestricted funds raised from other sources. Successful grantees will be expected to participate in training sessions that address the legal rules distinguishing restricted lobbying from permissible advocacy.

Grantees are encouraged to partner with organizations that have a mission and focus on programmatic and promotional initiatives.

Yes, physical projects may be funded through other sources.

Yes. While the process for developing a common assessment tool is still evolving, grantees must agree to participate in a planning and assessment process during the first six months of the grant period, which will culminate in the development of a work plan to guide their subsequent efforts.

The initial planning period may last for up to six months, and funding will be provided during that time. Grantees must demonstrate that appropriate assessments have been conducted, partners are on board and work plans are in place before implementation begins. In some cases, this may require much less than six months of planning time.

While the evaluation liaison is not required to be employed by the lead agency or one of its partners, it is highly preferred. Due to the ongoing nature of this work, we believe that a person with close ties to the lead agency or one of its partners, as well as the community, will be more effective in this role than a contractor or hourly consultant.

The National Advisory Committee consists of experts in a variety of disciplines related to Healthy Kids, Healthy Communities. A list of NAC members is available at www.healthykidshealthycommunities.org.

The workplan should focus on policies and environmental strategies to support both healthy eating and active living. However, grantees may choose to emphasize active living or healthy eating if they can demonstrate that their proposed initiative is coordinated with complementary community efforts to address the other behavior.

Healthy Kids, Healthy Communities is the Foundation's largest investment in community action.  Through this program, RWJF is able to fund proposals that involve schools either before or after the school day (e.g., joint use agreements or Safe Routes to School initiatives).  This includes travel to and from school, but does not include activities occurring during the school day.  

For this initiative, RWJF defines children as those aged 3 through 18.  There is no preference that a specific age or age range be targeted.

If the initiative is applicable to the school AND extends to the outside community, then it could be considered for funding provided it addresses both healthy eating and active living. 

Considering the potential replicability of your work is a good idea, and the participatory evaluation process will also address this issue. Plan for replicability to the extent your circumstances allow, but do not go beyond what is reasonable.

RWJF acknowledges the importance of community members' input and support for policy, and environmental changes.  Such support is typically necessary for positive changes to be fully implemented and sustained.  Thus, it is acceptable and expected that Healthy Kids Healthy Communities grantees engage in assessing perceptions, preferences, and the feasibility of proposed strategies with community members who at greatest risk for childhood obesity, as well as neighborhood leaders, and other stakeholders.  The final work plan should be based on these findings. This process may last up to six months at the beginning of the funding period. Grantees that are clearly able to demonstrate that they have already engaged in sufficient planning may shorten or bypass this requirement and may directly proceed with implementation activities once their work plan is approved.

The evaluation will have two purposes: (1) to track locally defined milestones for accomplishment, and (2) to help make the case for the importance of policy changes and the built environment in preventing childhood obesity. We anticipate that sites will be full partners in all aspects of this work. Although some aspects of the plan have to be defined in advance, we expect to be flexible and to consult with you in the development of a workable plan.

All grantees will be expected to budget for, and allocate in staffing, at least .10 FTE to help coordinate such activities. This person should have a leadership or coordination role in the project. A researcher is not necessary or desirable, because the liaison's job is to help coordinate access to people and data, to make suggestions on useful evaluation topics, and to use the information that comes out of the evaluation. In our experience, assigning a researcher to this role is an unnecessary expense. However, having the dedicated FTE assures that the evaluation will give constructive information to all concerned.

For a good example of the relationship we are trying to create, review the RWJF website for the Active For Life case study. Evaluation helped several of the grantees to expand and sustain their efforts because local sponsors had confidence in the effectiveness of the approach.

In general, you can expect a collaborative relationship, mutual respect, no hidden agendas or surprises and useful information to improve the programs and make the case for sustainability.

Shortly after the notice of award, we will be in touch to begin work with you in planning the evaluation. Some of this will flow naturally from the project planning period in which you will identify the needs and opportunities for policy and environmental changes.  We expect to work with several evaluation professionals who are skilled at participatory evaluation - working with the funded communities to outline a plan for tracking local accomplishments. You will have access to this individual throughout the course of the grant, both for training, technical assistance, data collection advice, and for feeding back useful information to your partnership.

After the milestones are defined, the designated evaluation liaison will be the point person for submitting information to a database maintained by the National Program Office. This database will permit each community, as well as the NPO, to generate reports tailored to their own needs for assessing progress.

In addition, there may be a more intensive evaluation of the impact of policy and environmental changes on children's eating and physical behavior. Planning and discussion for this effort are still underway and may be subject to change. If funded, this study would involve surveying children and their families directly, and should not require work on the part of the designated evaluation liaison. However, liaisons will have access to information about the outcomes for children and families in their communities as soon as it is available.

Grantees will be expected to meet RWJF requirements for the submission of financial and narrative reports. Grantees also are required to submit periodic information needed to assess overall project performance, monitoring and management. At the close of the funding period, the lead agency will be expected to provide a written report on the project and its findings for broad dissemination.

Partnerships will be expected to spend up to six months at the beginning of the grant to conduct assessment and planning, to refine and validate their workplans, and to prepare their partnership for implementation.

Project leaders and paid project staff will be expected to participate in a learning network for Healthy Kids, Healthy Communities. Occasional activities may include participation in teleconferences, webcasts, strategy sessions, peer exchanges or professional development sessions. Senior project leaders will be expected to serve in these roles, even if additional staff (e.g. project coordinators) is involved in the day-to-day management of the initiatives.