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) whose primary goal is to implement healthy eating and active living policy- and environmental-change initiatives that can support healthier communities for children and families across the United States. Healthy Kids, Healthy Communities places special emphasis on reaching children who are at highest risk for obesity on the basis of race/ethnicity, income and/or geographic location.

Through the program, RWJF seeks to catalyze and support communities' efforts to address the root causes of childhood obesity through integrated changes in policies, norms, practices, social supports and the physical environment. Healthy Kids, Healthy Communities will:

1. provide funding, tools and assistance to help funded 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 public and 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.

Healthy Kids, Healthy Communities Call for Proposals (CFP)
The objective of this round of funding is to provide support for community initiatives that will increase opportunities for physical activity and improve access to affordable healthy foods for children and families.

Under this CFP, RWJF will award approximately 60 grants for Healthy Kids, Healthy Communities sites, each of which will receive up to $360,000 total for four years. All grantees must secure a cash and/or in-kind match equal to at least 50 percent of the RWJF award over the entire grant period. More information on match requirements is provided in the CFP.

Special consideration will be given to communities in 15 states where the incidence of or risk for childhood obesity is the greatest (Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia.). Approximately half of the grants under this CFP will be awarded to communities in these states. 

Grants for Leading Sites
Nine communities already have received funding from RWJF as leading sites for the Healthy Kids, Healthy Communities program. These leading sites were selected based on their demonstrated leadership and success in achieving policy and environmental changes related to active living and healthy eating, as well as their readiness to implement broader-scale changes. These leading sites also will serve as mentors and ambassadors to grantees that are funded through this CFP.  More information about the leading site grantees can be found here.

Inquiries
Please direct inquiries regarding programmatic issues to: info@healthykidshealthycommunities.org.

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) 843-8430.