OBSERVATIONS - aPRIL 8, 2008
Healthy Eating Active Living Convergence Partnership Made Its Debut
A quiet yet extraordinarily powerful revolution has begun in health philanthropy—that of multifield, equity-focused collaborative action.
A new collaborative, the Healthy Eating Active Living (HEAL) Convergence Partnership, made its debut in February at the Grant Makers In Health annual meeting. The partnership aims to move beyond retail grant making by using environmental and policy focused strategies to achieve its goals.
Today, various fields (e.g., public health, sustainable agriculture, smart growth, economic and community development, health care, etc) are each focused on strategies and activities in their particular domain aimed at improving eating and physical activity environments. The Convergence Partnership recognizes a critical need for greater collaboration across these fields that is grounded in common policy objectives.
The steering committee of the Convergence Partnership includes representatives from its six founding health philanthropy organizations: The California Endowment, Kaiser Permanente, Nemours, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention serve as technical advisors to the partnership. The work of the group is supported by Policy Link, a national research and action institute devoted to advancing economic and social equity.
“We looked around and realized that we were all doing place-based, environmental and policy-focused HEAL work with a real focus on disparities,” said Loel Solomon, Kaiser Permanente’s director of Community Health Initiatives and Evaluation. “A significant portion of our portfolios were already moving to this theory of change. We got together to ask, what can we do together to accelerate the field and inform each other’s work?” Creating environmental change is just too expensive and too complex to go it alone, so we really needed to make strategic investments with other funders and institutions.”
The Convergence Partnership will pursue a variety of strategies to coordinate and leverage resources among philanthropic, public and private organizations to advance the HEAL field across sectors and at the community, regional, and national levels. Key strategies include:
1. Building support for HEAL policies at the national, state and local levels
2. Promoting and supporting connections within the HEAL field
3. Optimizing and increasing investments in community-based initiatives
4. Supporting innovations in the marketplace.
Key principles that will shape the group’s activities going forward are that environments influence health both directly and by impacts on norm and culture, and that policy and practice influence environments. Consequently, the Convergence Partnership is focused on identifying and advocating policies and practices that foster healthy environments.
“The value proposition of the Convergence Partnership starts with a bigger frame—it’s not only about obesity,” Solomon said. “It means coming at the problem with different goals—from a climate change goal, from a community and environmental development goal, from a livable communities goal, and from a social justice goal.”
To coincide with its introduction at the Grantmakers In Health meeting, the Convergence Partnership launched a new website. The web site highlights the group’s vision and strategies and features policy briefs addressing issues such as the built environment, access to health foods, and access to physical activity. There is also a toolkit specifically designed for funders interested in engaging multiple fields in HEAL initiatives in their grantmaking portfolios.
Are you one of a growing number of people that believe the health impact and costs associated with unhealthy environments have become a priority for policy change? If so, I encourage you to keep an eye on the Convergence Partnership as it builds momentum for multifield strategies to reverse the trends of poor diet and physical inactivity.
- Brian Raymond, MPH, Senior Policy Consultant,
KP IHP
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