This local collaboration is funding neighborhood health in mid-sized cities

As city populations continue to rise and diversify, Reinvestment Fund and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation believe mid-sized cities — the ones with populations between 50,000 and 400,000 — are on the vanguard of what it mean to prosper in the 21st century.

Huh?

“This is where the majority of Americans live and where many experience some of the nation’s deepest challenges with entrenched poverty, poor health and lack of investment,” said Kavita Vijayan, communications director at Reinvestment Fund. (The organization recently rebranded and dropped the “The” in its name.) “Collectively, mid-sized cities have more individuals living in poverty than large cities.”

And, given the populations of mid-sized cities, they can be fertile testing ground for new health initiatives, Vijayan said. So, when RWJF published recommendations on how to foster healthier neighborhoods back in 2014, Reinvestment Fund was brought in to partner on a new neighborhood health initiative.

Launched this past fall, the initiative is called Invest Health, and it aims to provide up to 50 mid-sized U.S. cities — so, not Philadelphia — with an opportunity to improve health in their neighborhoods through local solution-driven, diverse cross-sector partnerships. And they’ll do it with $60,000, all regranted from funds RWJF has awarded Reinvestment Fund.

Here’s how it works:

• Applicants will assemble five-member teams comprised of cross-sector leaders. Each team must include one representative from city government, one from an anchor institution and one from the community development sector.
• Teams accepted into the initiative will have access to “highly skilled faculty advisors and coaches” and other resources.
• From there, the teams will develop a concrete plan to address one or more measurable impact goal. Vijayan said examples of this could be a 75 percent increase in middle and high school students who reported feeling safe in their communities or a 20 percent increase in availability of quality affordable housing for large families.

Expectations for those teams are not light.

Teams are expected to heavily engage community residents in their planning process and build a “strong, sustainable collaboration of community development, built environment, and health sector stakeholders,” Vijayan said. Those plans will need to “identify and include key systems-change strategies” that will build healthier neighborhoods.

That includes tooling around with funding streams to better leverage how capital is being deployed in neighborhoods. And speaking of funding, teams will also be expected to discover two or three “actionable investment opportunities” to advance their city’s health priorities.

Rigorous. But what with Invest Health do with the results?

According to Vijayan, it’s a bit too early to start talking about how the data will be used — the application deadline is Jan. 29, followed by a second phase of applications in February before selections are announced in April. Still, Invest Health hopes to share some of the work participating cities will be doing over the 18-month period with the public.