A Year of Relentless Commitment to Equity & Progress
Letters from Leadership
A Letter to Advocates from American Heart Association CEO Nancy Brown
Investing in Champions for Health Equity
All children, no matter where they live, should grow up with access to healthy and affordable foods, safe drinking water and family-friendly places for physical activity.
Voices for Healthy Kids, an initiative of the American Heart Association, with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, makes it easier and more enticing for children to eat healthy, drink smart and move more.
This mission is more important than ever as communities nationwide manage health disparities exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
That is why the American Heart Association, as a long-standing champion for health equity, is putting a stake in the ground to dismantle structural barriers to health and well-being. Simply put, we are relentless in our commitment to create a world where every person has the opportunity to live a full, healthy life.
Lighting our path is our 2024 Impact Goal to advance cardiovascular health for all, including identifying and removing barriers to health care access and quality.
In pursuit of that goal, we made 10 Commitments, which we are systematically fulfilling through investments, advocacy, innovation and engagement.
I could not be prouder of the role that Voices for Healthy Kids plays in realizing these commitments, working tirelessly with local and national organizations to transform communities from the ground up.
Over the past year, campaign efforts doubled in support of community organizations disproportionately affected by the pandemic.
Whether leveraging our leading science to make an advocacy impact, building advocacy capacity, funding equity-focused community organizations or creating messaging playbooks, including the Racial Equity in Public Policy Message Guide, Voices for Healthy Kids is a trusted and enduring connector across the country.
On behalf of the American Heart Association and Voices for Healthy Kids, I extend heartfelt thanks to our funders, supporters, grantees and collaborators for helping lead the way as champions of health equity for all.
All my best,
Nancy BrownChief Executive OfficerAmerican Heart Association
From the Voices for Healthy Kids Executive Director Lori Fresina
This past year, Voices for Healthy Kids reimagined our purpose. We pushed ourselves to think about more ways we could create and support opportunities for all children to thrive by putting our powerful institutional tools and assets directly into the hands of the communities most impacted by structural racism. We hope that anyone who collaborates with Voices for Healthy Kids as a grantee, trainee, community-based organization, or leadership volunteer leaves this experience more prepared to successfully advocate for any issue they deem important while prioritizing equity.
We’ve challenged ourselves to provide the greatest value possible — and that has changed how we approach grantmaking, policy development, campaign support, leadership development, and more. None of this reimagination was done in isolation. We are becoming better and more active listeners, seeking and accepting input with humility, curiosity, and openness.
Our Strategic Advisory Committee remains a driving force behind the scenes, propelling our equity work and impacting our policies, practices, and culture. We expanded the committee to include more community perspectives and past and current grantees, bringing important local voices into the room as thought partners. We also welcomed a new committee chair, Donna Arnett, Ph.D., M.S.P.H., B.S.N., dean of the University of Kentucky College of Public Health and past president of the American Heart Association.
We added equity-focused experts to our Policy Research Network to help us become more anti-racist in our policy agenda. We centered equity in our grantmaking process, and awarded 57 grants in FY 2020 - 2021.
We pulled out all the stops to provide grantees and other organizations with the best, most relevant assistance and resources possible. Early in the pandemic, we launched an online, accessible training series that builds and cultivates advocates’ skills to extend beyond a single campaign or policy conversation. We trained hundreds of people in storytelling, communicating with decision-makers, and digital advocacy.
We are grateful for the ongoing support of the American Heart Association and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and thank our new funders, including the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, and The Pritzker Children's Initiative.
And, of course, we are thankful for our entire Voices for Healthy Kids network — our grantees, national collaborators, community-based organizations, researchers, and more — as each of you plays a unique and critical role in creating equitable neighborhoods nationwide.
With respect and gratitude,
Lori FresinaExecutive DirectorVoices for Healthy Kids
By The Numbers, 2013-2021
Increasing Impact
294policy successes (as of 8/1/21)
273 millionpeople affected by Voices for Healthy Kids policy wins* **Represents population of states and/or communities impacted by policies passed. Policies must meet American Heart Association’s guidelines, which are based on science and potential population impact (as of 8/1/21).
50%increased chance of passing a state policy with Voices for Healthy Kids support* * Bleich, Sara N, et al. The Voices for Healthy Kids Campaign and US State Legislation to Prevent Childhood Obesity. American Journal of Public Health: March 2016, Vol. 106, No. 3: 436-439.
$4.2 billionsecured in appropriations to support mission-related programs and services that address the root causes of childhood obesity and health inequities (since the start of the initiative)
Building A Movement
260campaigns funded (as of 8/1/21)
27organizations in the Strategic Advisory Committee aligning with policy priorities and centering health equity (2021 committee)
144organizations participating in Voices for Healthy Kids’ advisory committees, work groups and other collaborations (as of 8/1/21)
79,148online grassroots advocates (as of 8/1/21)
Training and Resources
21advocacy toolkits created
19national message research projects
5,875requests for skills building, planning and consultation (technical assistance)
Policy Wins Across the U.S.
Introduction
Voices for Healthy Kids believes change starts within the community. Passionate parents, teachers, neighbors, and advocates know best the healthy changes that will improve their communities’ health and lives.
But for far too long, there has been a disconnect between powerful institutions in the public and non-profit sectors and the lived experiences of the communities they represent. Discriminatory policies, practices, and beliefs perpetuate this power imbalance, undermining community ownership and self-determination.
This must change.
Voices for Healthy Kids exists to amplify the needs and solutions of community leaders who are advocating for changes in policy, systems, and environments. Our investments are pointed at and directed to the people who know how to create change and improve health outcomes where they live. We’re coalition-builders, advocates, and connectors who use the American Heart Association's resources and political capital to recognize the tremendous power already within Black, African American, Latino, Native American, Alaskan Native, Hawaiian Native, Pacific Islander, and Asian American communities and families with low incomes.
By trusting, supporting, and investing in the people and places experiencing the greatest health inequities, we can remove barriers that stand in the way of healthy, thriving children and families everywhere.
Commitment to Racial Equity
From its inception, Voices for Healthy Kids has had an unwavering commitment to the inclusion of health equity across our organization, and we continuously seek improvement. To fully realize our mission, we must address the inequities, biases, and racism that purposefully exist in current systems and policies, and have intentionally marginalized or excluded some communities. We need to work to understand how they have impacted the lives of children, and then do everything we can to change our racist and oppressive systems.
“We are committed to centering health equity and racial justice in our work. It is our responsibility to elevate communities that have been systemically marginalized and oppressed, in order to create sustainable policy solutions.”
— April Wallace, Health Equity Partnership Manager, Voices for Healthy Kids
In collaboration with community groups, we are advancing policies that prioritize to people experiencing the greatest health disparities — those who are Black, African American, Latino, Native American, Alaskan Native, Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, and Asian American and families who have low incomes. Together, we are helping to build a more equitable nation.
In FY 2020 - 2021, we:
Diversified our Strategic Advisory Committee, which had historically only included national organizations, to include community-based organizations that represent Black and Indigenous communities and other people of color.
Expanded our Policy Research Network to include equity-focused research experts who challenge us to see shortcomings in our research efforts, such as design and methodology; help get us closer to root causes of inequities; and become more anti-racist in our policy agenda. These experts’ knowledge is having ripple effects beyond Voices for Healthy Kids — reaching others with whom we work to dismantle inequities every day.
Expanded our research vendors and advisors to include a community of diverse evaluators who drive and support the practice of culturally responsive and equitable evaluation.
Identified geographies experiencing the greatest health disparities and focused our grantmaking on these places. We also piloted strategies to ensure funding is directed to organizations with diverse leadership and that grantees are engaging communities of color, high-poverty areas, and areas with high food insecurity.
Created a new Racial Equity in Public Policy Guide to advance both equitable policies and conversations about structural racism. We disseminated the guide widely and provided trainings to organizations, public health leaders, and funders nationwide on its use.
Continued to deepen our staff’s personal and professional understanding of racial equity through ongoing training, strategy sessions, and leadership commitments.
"Voices has always focused on equity. It drives me so much every day. They really got me engaged and feeling passionate about addressing health disparities.”
— Voices for Healthy Kids Grantee (submitted anonymously)
Particularly in this past year, Voices for Healthy Kids has fostered a learning community—one where we weren’t just imparting campaign guidance, skills, and technical assistance but also learning from campaigns and communities. One way in which we did this was by intentionally building diverse relationships, including adding additional leadership to ask us hard questions and hold us accountable for centering racial equity in absolutely everything we do.
Strategic Advisory Committee
We added six additional members, four of whom work for community-based organizations and represent the communities we serve to our Strategic Advisory Committee, which provides strategic guidance and direction. They explore and advance key movement-wide topics that broadly impact member organizations and deepen our understanding and commitments around equity. One of these members is Hispanic Unity of Florida, a former Voices for Healthy Kids grantee for whom we provided technical assistance as they advocated for rights for immigrant families to be included in the COVID-19 federal relief package and for Medicaid and SNAP expansion. Building off our work in Indian Country and the relationships we’ve developed, there is now a representative, Tasha Fridia, from the Oglala-Sioux Tribe on the Strategic Advisory Committee. Another one of our new members is our chair, Donna Arnett, Ph.D., M.S.P.H., B.S.N., dean of the University of Kentucky College of Public Health.
Their perspectives, as recipients of our grants and services, as well as their on-the-ground knowledge about the communities we serve, are invaluable.
We also formed new collaborations to help us build leadership, on-the-ground connections, and better understanding of the lived experiences of communities, and make plans to turn our ideas into action.
Health Leaders for Healthy Kids
This is a collaborative of more than a dozen organizations representing health care providers across disciplines that have committed to lending their voices to local policy campaigns through community conversations, speaking to the media, testifying at public hearings, meeting with lawmakers, and more.
Sugary Drink/Healthy Hydration National Collaborative
This collaborative provides an inclusive convening space for local, state, tribal, and national stakeholders involved in efforts to reduce the consumption of sugary drinks and increase healthy hydration – especially among children in communities with the highest prevalence of diseases related to sugary drink consumption, most targeted by beverage companies, and most likely to lack access to appealing, no-cost drinking water.
Collaborations with Native American and Alaskan Native Communities
Voices for Healthy Kids’ work with Indian Country began as a singular Fertile Ground grant program and has grown to include voices and perspectives that impact our policymaking and grantmaking practices. Some of the new voices representing Native American perspectives and strengthening cultural understanding around policymaking are:
Ahniwake Rose, Executive Director of the Oklahoma Policy Institute, who serves as a technical assistance provider for our Indian Country funded campaigns
Tasha Fridia, who represents the Ogalala-Sioux on the Strategic Advisory Committee
Renee Goldtooth of Notah Begay 3 Foundation, who collaborates with our Policy Research Network workgroup
Rose James, PhD of the Urban Indian Health Institute, who serves as a Health Leaders for Healthy Kids member and Policy Research Network member
Innovation, Equity, and Exploration Workgroups
Our Innovation, Equity, and Exploration Workgroups (IEE) explore policy questions to advance advocacy innovation and health equity, look at how policy issues overlap, and support dialogue on social, demographic, policy, and other trends related to our priorities. This past year, the workgroups focused on:
Exploring equity in access to early care and education programs, Head Start, and Early Head Start Policies, including state discriminatory practices, led by the National Head Start Association.
Exploring how to implement and expand healthy school meals for all and the Community Eligibility Provisions (CEP) to offer free breakfast and lunch to all students. This included looking at districts that adopted the policies and identifying barriers and benefits of states and districts in pursuing either approach, led by the Tisch Center for Food, Education and Policy.
Developing a new policy lever on WIC access and needs, based on research and a landscape analysis conducted by the IEE workgroup focusing on state-by-state enrollment methods, led by Voices for Georgia’s Children.
Creating tribal policy lever recommendations to improve food quality and systems and meet early childhood education needs in Indigenous populations, and create a culturally appropriate advocacy resource, led by American Indian Cancer Foundation.
Our Approach to Research
As always, the American Heart Association’s trusted science continues to play a foundational role in supporting Voices for Healthy Kids’ policy change efforts. It grows the evidence base for new and existing policies and provides trusted, evidence-based resources and materials to campaigns.
Recognizing gaps in our lived experiences of racial and socio-economic inequities, Voices for Healthy Kids better aligned our research network to reflect the needs of the communities we serve. This required recruiting new research experts from the University of Miami School of Medicine, Urban Indian Health Institute, Urban Institute, County Health Rankings, and the Council on Black Health, and then launching the equity-focused Policy Research Advisory Group. These experts are part of our larger Policy Research Network, formed in 2014, and include Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-funded research partners, American Heart Association professional volunteers (clinicians and scientists), academic institutions, and individual researchers.
We also expanded our pool of our research vendors to include a community of diverse evaluators who expertly drive and support the practice of culturally responsive and equitable evaluation.
Finally, this year, we also conducted research and authored studies about urgent public health issues, such as sugary drink consumption, that disproportionately impact communities of color and families with low incomes. Voices for Healthy Kids Senior Manager for Policy Research, Dr. Stephanie Scarmo co-authored with Drs. Jim Krieger, Sara Bleich, and Shu Wen Ng Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Reduction Policies: Progress and Promise, which reviewed policies that have been used to reduce sugary drink exposure and consumption.
How We Work
Service to Campaigns
Voices for Healthy Kids has always hoped to help our collaborators and grantees build advocacy skills as they work to improve the health of children in communities across the country. In years past, our team has traveled around the country convening advocates and allies for trainings and conferences.
We had to learn how to work with grantees and organizations differently in 2020 and 2021. Pivoting quickly in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, we converted what were typically in-person gatherings into virtual trainings. This shift allowed us to be more inclusive and reach more people. We trained not just campaign leaders but also their coalition partners, members, and supporters. And we helped them learn how to train others in the community.
We were grateful we could apply our expertise in a way that reached far more people than ever before. Along the way, we worked with communities to help build strong, inclusive campaign infrastructure that extends far beyond a single policy win or issue. Campaigns are now equipped and emboldened to initiate and sustain conversations among supporters and policymakers about how we make communities healthier for children.
“It’s definitely increased our capacity. All of these topics are things that I can carry on to future campaigns. And for the rest of my career.”
— Voices for Healthy Kids Grantee(submitted anonymously)
"I think [training and technical assistance] allowed us to think in a more structured way about campaigns. It gave us the support to be able to learn the policy process and build the capacity of our organization.”
— Voices for Healthy Kids Grantee(submitted anonymously)
Highlights from the year include:
Developing a five-part training for Kids Forward Wisconsin and its early childhood education coalition partners. In Effectively Communicating with Lawmakers and Beyond, participants learned about the legislative process, tips for communicating their story as it relates to legislative requests, and tips for effectively communicating with lawmakers and beyond to advance campaign priorities. They also had the opportunity to hear directly from Wisconsin legislative staff and to apply their learnings by participating in mock interviews and meetings.
Working with the Women’s Fund of Greater Birmingham, we conducted a training series for the Women’s Policy Institute inaugural class of Fellows. The Fellows are community-based leaders who play a role in shaping and implementing policies that address the needs of women across the state. Fellows were trained in campaign planning, media advocacy, messaging, grassroots organizing, and social media.
Creating a Racial Equity in Public Policy Message Guide to share with collaborators and allies, and then launching a training series to support its use. This resource is designed to advance both equitable policies and conversations about structural racism with policymakers.
“That health equity messaging guide has been super helpful, and I’ve shared that around to some partners as well. And I think it’s really well done and it gives really clear and straightforward information about how to make sure that equity is front and center in your campaign.”
— Voices for Healthy Kids Grantee(submitted anonymously)
In FY 2020 - 2021, Voices for Healthy Kids awarded 57 grants to organizations advancing racial and health equity to improve the health of children, families, and communities.
December 2020: $2.5 million to 16 community health organizations in 14 states, Puerto Rico, and Washington, DC, to increase access to and incentives for healthy food and drinks and early education. The funding addresses economic security, such as ensuring children and families have access to quality, affordable early care and education, as well as food security and healthy eating by expanding state funding for SNAP, increasing access to no-cost water in schools, and building community support for healthy kids’ meals and taxes on sugary drinks.
June 2021: $1 million to five community organizations to promote nutrition and economic security in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania. The funding will help advance policies for improving health equity, with a focus on early care and education, food security and access to water in schools.
“These grants are one piece of our commitment to solving deeply sown societal issues that keep entire populations from reaping the health benefits of economic security, food security, and access to safe places to be active.”
— Donna Arnett, Ph.D., M.S.P.H., B.S.N., chair of Voices for Healthy Kids’ Strategic Advisory Committee, Dean of the University of Kentucky College of Public Health, and past president of the American Heart Association
Voices for Healthy Kids also launched a preemption policy fund to protect local democracies and advance equity. The fund, backed by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, and The Rockefeller Foundation, awards grants to organizations that protect the local right to advocate for and implement equitable policies and fight special industry groups that threaten the health and economic security of their communities.
We made significant changes to the way we approach our grantmaking, too—using data tools to inform where we fund, whom we fund, and how we evaluate grant applications and success.
Where We Fund
Using a detailed rubric based on data, we are able to prioritize areas in the country to fund: awarding grants to the geographies experiencing the greatest health disparities as measured by childhood obesity rate, percentage of the people of color, percentage of children under the federal poverty level and the percentage of children who are food insecure.
Who We Fund
Voices for Healthy Kids believes in lived experiences as important qualifications in community led policy change work. We also acknowledge, currently and historically, that organizations led by people of color face more barriers and receive less funding than white led organizations. As breaking down racial and health disparities is key to the Voices for Healthy Kids mission, we are committed to increasing funding to organizations and campaigns that have leadership that is Black, African American, Latino, Native American, Alaskan Native, Hawaiian Native, Pacific Islander, and Asian American.
How We Evaluate
In addition to prioritizing location and evaluating leadership diversity, grant applicants are evaluated based on their potential to reduce health disparities, engagement and power building in communities most impacted, experience in changing policy, understanding of the historical context of the issues and inequities.
Policy Priorities
Policy Priorities
Voices for Healthy Kids focuses our efforts on the places that have been disinvested in for far too long: Black, African American, Latino, Native American, Alaskan Native, Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, and Asian American communities and families with low income. We advance equitable policies that make the places where kids and their families live, learn, and play healthier. These policies make healthier options more accessible and affordable for all families. We work to:
Making healthy, affordable food easily available and decreasing the consumption of sugary beverages
Without access to affordable healthy food and drinks, a nutritious diet and good health are out of reach. We support state, local, and tribal policies that increase access to healthy food and beverages, make it easier to eat healthy, and drive industry innovation to improve the food and drinks we all need.
Sugary Drinks
In 2020, we conducted message research, to help inform our advocacy efforts to decrease sugary drink consumption. We turned our findings into several messaging resources and a complementary creative suite that help advocates talk about the long-term health outcomes of sugary drinks, how sugary drink tax revenue can support community programs, and the unjust marketing to communities of color and families with low income. We took the resources on a virtual roadshow, training advocates and organizations across the country in how to use them. For example, we presented at the Center for Science and Public Interest’s 2021 Sugary Drink Summit, which brought together public health experts and advocates working to reduce the consumption of sugary drinks.
In spring 2021, we built off that research to learn more about Latino adults’ attitudes about sugary drinks and campaigns to reduce consumption of those drinks. The findings from the national survey can be used by campaigns to help engage the Latino community in these efforts.
“We've been using these [sugary drink] resources and find them extremely helpful! “
— Jane Kramer, Co-founder of Sugar Smart Coalition, Founder of Michigan Advocates for Healthy Checkouts
These tools were also informed by our work with grantees who have fought hard to change policy in their communities. Advocates in Cleveland, Columbus, and Toledo were successful in getting policies or ordinances passed to make healthy drink options the default option on kids’ meals in restaurants.
A tax on sugary drinks and junk food, originally established in 2014 and set to expire in 2020, was extended in the Navajo Nation, particularly important to address health concerns impacting the Diné community. It is the first such policy in the world, serving as an example of tribal sovereignty to support community wellness, and revenue taxes have funded more than 1,300 community-selected wellness projects across the Navajo Nation, including community fitness classes, greenhouses, youth clubs, clean water initiatives, Navajo language and culture classes, and more.
Other cities, like Philadelphia, celebrated sugary drink tax anniversaries. Since Philadelphia implemented the beverage tax, there have been notable health impacts, such as a 38% reduction in sugary drink purchases according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Funding from the sugary drink tax has been used to support thousands of pre-K slots, more than a dozen community schools, and improvements to parks and recreation centers. The city focuses funding in areas lacking child care options and communities with greater numbers of families with low incomes.
Cities like Seattle have been able to address hunger with funding from sugary drink tax revenue. Last year, a community-driven campaign directed tax revenues to help feed families who were food insecure during COVID-19. Voices for Healthy Kids also awarded grants to help partners in over a dozen states push for extending food assistance benefits. See the Special Report: COVID-19 Rapid Response Grantees for more.
Ensuring early childhood programs and services are accessible and of high quality for families with low incomes
The more frequently infants and toddlers can be in healthy and supportive learning environments, the more likely they will be emotionally, mentally, and physically healthy and thrive, and of course, their parents will be supported. We fund and support early childhood development opportunities at the state and local levels, with a focus on children growing up in communities historically underserved or even excluded from economic opportunity.
For example, in FY 2020 - 2021, we supported advocates in Multnomah County, Oregon, to establish a “preschool for all” program, which prioritizes the community’s toddlers and children who currently have the least access, children who speak languages other than English, and children experiencing poverty. The program also provides special support for children with developmental delays and disabilities while building toward a fully universal system, and provides up to six hours per day of tuition-free, developmentally appropriate early learning, reflecting best practices.
And, next door in Washington state, Voices for Healthy Kids continued to support advocates who worked for multiple years to develop an Early Head Start pilot program that grew into $18.7-million-funded Early Head Start program, as well as to codify the program into state law.
In St. Louis, voters approved Proposition R, which will raise $2.3 million annually for early childhood programs and services each year, equitably allocated to programs serving infants and toddlers in the city’s most divested communities - a policy change made possible by Voices for Healthy Kids grantee WEPOWER.
And, most recently, our grantmaking and support extended to increase accessibility for child care workers in Colorado. This is particularly important, as early care and education centers have been closed or are severely understaffed as result of the COVID-19 pandemic, and many people — particularly the women and people of color who typically work in child care jobs — in the U.S. are unemployed. Now, barriers to obtaining professional and commercial child care licenses have been removed for undocumented immigrants, a huge victory for efforts to dismantle employment discrimination, and in turn, support working parents and the Colorado workforce and economy.
Preventing states, industry, and special interests from blocking local actions that promote health, well-being, and equity
Local governments are uniquely positioned to meet the needs of the people in their communities by reflecting local context and values. Depending on the community, that could mean passing local laws to improve quality of life through sugary drink taxes, paid sick leave, smoke-free worksites, limited use of plastic bags, or equal rights for the LGBTQ+ community.
Voices for Healthy Kids supports coalitions that defend local governments’ ability to promote health, well-being, and equity against efforts that would allow the state to prevent local action. This kind of state and corporate interference is often referred to as preemption.
It’s not an easy task to define preemption -- and it’s even more difficult to shape a new narrative about it and motivate audiences to allow for local communities to make their own decisions about the issues that affect them. With insights from messaging research, Voices for Healthy Kids developed a message manual to help campaigns talk about preemption effectively, as well as a complementary creative toolkit. As we do with all of our messaging and toolkit projects, the materials were supported by several trainings on how to use them.
Improving schools’ health and wellness policies and practices
Children — no matter where they live or what grade they are in — benefit from healthy food and clean water. That’s why we are committed to building healthy school environments. We do this by promoting good nutrition and access to safe and appealing water at no cost in all schools, especially those that have been historically under-resourced or excluded from economic opportunity.
In FY 2020 - 2021, Voices for Healthy Kids funded the California Association of Food Banks and the Center for Ecoliteracy, which led California to become the first state in the nation to permanently adopt free school meals for all K–12 students.
Voices for Healthy Kids also funded and supported four campaigns that advocated for improved access to water at schools in Tennessee,Arkansas, Texas, and Mississippi. Now, all new schools undergoing major renovations or newly built in Arkansas and Hamilton County, Tennessee will require water bottle filling stations. In Austin, Texas, public schools will include more water bottle filling stations in indoor and outdoor common spaces. And in Brookhaven, Mississippi, both staff and students are now allowed to carry water bottles.
Special Report: COVID-19 Rapid Response Grant Outcomes
Special Report: COVID-19 Rapid Response Grant Outcomes
Last spring, Voices for Healthy Kids quickly developed a new grant opportunity to provide rapid response dollars to help address the health and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic; $1 million was awarded to organizations across 19 states, Puerto Rico, and the Lummi Nation in Washington state. Many of the organizations support communities hardest hit by the pandemic so they, too, needed to adapt quickly. With the COVID-19 Rapid Response Grants, these organizations were able to direct resources to the compounding hardships facing children and families around the country.
Acting with Urgency
Recognizing the devastating impact of COVID-19, the community organizations mobilized with purpose and urgency — focusing their advocacy on the health, food, housing, and economic insecurities intensified by the pandemic. Not only did the COVID-19 Rapid Response Grants provide direct dollars to support the work; they also created connections across communities and among advocates working on similar issues across the country. This enabled grantees to collaborate in new ways and expanded the Voices for Healthy Kids network to include new organizations that remain active in our network.
Addressing Health Inequities
Grantees pushed to address health inequities, such as making COVID-19 testing and other critical health services more accessible in communities of color. Some organizations were able to have an impact just a few short months after grants were awarded, including grantees who advocated for the expansion of Medicaid in Missouri and Oklahoma. Following on the work of grantees in these two states, advocates in North Carolina and Texas have also been raising public awareness and civic engagement around healthcare needs, laying the groundwork for Medicaid expansion.
Improving Access to Healthy Food
As COVID-19 exposed critical weaknesses in our food systems, grantees in several states also advanced policies to help children and families access healthy food. For example:
Along with others across the country, Alabama Arise successfully engaged federal policymakers to push for an increase in monthly SNAP benefits and an extension of pandemic EBT benefits. At the state level, Nebraska Appleseed led a diverse coalition to push state policymakers to adopt the federal pandemic EBT option to provide food assistance resources to tens of thousands of households across Nebraska.
Cultiva La Salud forged enduring community partnerships that allowed them to continue offering school meals to children in four school districts in California during the summer of 2020. By identifying and removing barriers to participation in school meal programs, their approach ensured that the greatest number of children over the greatest number of days received summer meals. Their efforts over the summer had a positive impact on fall meal operations in the targeted school districts, too.
The Hawaii Appleseed Center for Law and Economic Justice launched a campaign to apply the state’s funding from the federal CARES Act purchase of local produce by food banks. This campaign not only responded to an immediate need due to the pandemic; it also initiated a longer-term conversation about the role food nonprofits play in building resilient community-based food systems.
“This award afforded us the opportunity to bring together a very valuable partnership. Because of it, we could gather initial data from school districts and parents, which was foundational to our continued advocacy related to promoting school meals.”
- Cultiva La Salud
Grantees
ACCESS Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services
Alabama Arise
American Diabetes Association
American Heart Association
Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights
Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families
Arkansas Hunger Relief Alliance
Beyond Housing
California Association of Food Banks
California Walks
Center for Health Progress
Center for Rural Affairs
Childhood Obesity Prevention Coalition (COPC)
Coalition for Social Justice Ed Fund
Community Farm Alliance
Community Health Council of Wyandotte County
Cultiva La Salud
DC Greens
Dine' Food Sovereignty Alliance
Equality Ohio Education Fund
Every Texan (formerly Center for Public Policy Priorities)
First Nations Development Institute
Fusion Partnership fiscal sponsor for SPACEs In Action
Groundwork Center for Resilient Communities
Hawai‘i Public Health Institute
Hawaii Appleseed Center for Law and Economic Justice
HealthMPowers
Hispanic Unity of Florida, Inc.
Hunger Action Los Angeles
Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR)
Kids Forward (formerly Wisconsin Council on Children and Families)
Lhaqtemish Foundation
MA Food System Collaborative
Maine Consumers for Affordable Health Care
Make the Road New York
Maryland Medical Society - MedChi
Michigan Chapter American Academy of Pediatric
Mississippi Low Income Child Care Initiative
NAACP Maryland State Conference
Nebraska Appleseed
New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty
Oklahoma Institute for Child Advocacy
Oral Health Kansas
Pinnacle Prevention
Policy Institute for the Children of Louisiana
Rhode Island Public Health Institute
Rural Economic Development Center, Inc.
Small Business Majority Foundation Inc.
SPUR
Stand Up Nashville
Statewide Alignment Group (SWAG)
Tenants and Workers United
Texas Organizing Project Education Fund
The Food Trust
The Women's Fund of Greater Birmingham
Tobacco Free Kansas Coalition
Together Louisiana
Voices for Georgia's Children
Washington State Association of Head Start and ECEAP
WEPOWER
Wholespire
Youth Development Institute
IntroductionCommitment to Racial EquityLeadership & CollaborationOur Approach to ResearchHow We WorkPolicy PrioritiesSpecial Report: COVID-19 Rapid Response Grant OutcomesGrantees
Voices for Healthy Kids believes change starts within the community. Passionate parents, teachers, neighbors, and advocates know best the healthy changes that will improve their communities’ health and lives.
But for far too long, there has been a disconnect between powerful institutions in the public and non-profit sectors and the lived experiences of the communities they represent. Discriminatory policies, practices, and beliefs perpetuate this power imbalance, undermining community ownership and self-determination.
This must change.
Voices for Healthy Kids exists to amplify the needs and solutions of community leaders who are advocating for changes in policy, systems, and environments. Our investments are pointed at and directed to the people who know how to create change and improve health outcomes where they live. We’re coalition-builders, advocates, and connectors who use the American Heart Association's resources and political capital to recognize the tremendous power already within Black, African American, Latino, Native American, Alaskan Native, Hawaiian Native, Pacific Islander, and Asian American communities and families with low incomes.
By trusting, supporting, and investing in the people and places experiencing the greatest health inequities, we can remove barriers that stand in the way of healthy, thriving children and families everywhere.
From its inception, Voices for Healthy Kids has had an unwavering commitment to the inclusion of health equity across our organization, and we continuously seek improvement. To fully realize our mission, we must address the inequities, biases, and racism that purposefully exist in current systems and policies, and have intentionally marginalized or excluded some communities. We need to work to understand how they have impacted the lives of children, and then do everything we can to change our racist and oppressive systems.
“We are committed to centering health equity and racial justice in our work. It is our responsibility to elevate communities that have been systemically marginalized and oppressed, in order to create sustainable policy solutions.”
— April Wallace, Health Equity Partnership Manager, Voices for Healthy Kids
In collaboration with community groups, we are advancing policies that prioritize to people experiencing the greatest health disparities — those who are Black, African American, Latino, Native American, Alaskan Native, Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, and Asian American and families who have low incomes. Together, we are helping to build a more equitable nation.
In FY 2020 - 2021, we:
Diversified our Strategic Advisory Committee, which had historically only included national organizations, to include community-based organizations that represent Black and Indigenous communities and other people of color.
Expanded our Policy Research Network to include equity-focused research experts who challenge us to see shortcomings in our research efforts, such as design and methodology; help get us closer to root causes of inequities; and become more anti-racist in our policy agenda. These experts’ knowledge is having ripple effects beyond Voices for Healthy Kids — reaching others with whom we work to dismantle inequities every day.
Expanded our research vendors and advisors to include a community of diverse evaluators who drive and support the practice of culturally responsive and equitable evaluation.
Identified geographies experiencing the greatest health disparities and focused our grantmaking on these places. We also piloted strategies to ensure funding is directed to organizations with diverse leadership and that grantees are engaging communities of color, high-poverty areas, and areas with high food insecurity.
Created a new Racial Equity in Public Policy Guide to advance both equitable policies and conversations about structural racism. We disseminated the guide widely and provided trainings to organizations, public health leaders, and funders nationwide on its use.
Continued to deepen our staff’s personal and professional understanding of racial equity through ongoing training, strategy sessions, and leadership commitments.
"Voices has always focused on equity. It drives me so much every day. They really got me engaged and feeling passionate about addressing health disparities.”
— Voices for Healthy Kids Grantee (submitted anonymously)
Particularly in this past year, Voices for Healthy Kids has fostered a learning community—one where we weren’t just imparting campaign guidance, skills, and technical assistance but also learning from campaigns and communities. One way in which we did this was by intentionally building diverse relationships, including adding additional leadership to ask us hard questions and hold us accountable for centering racial equity in absolutely everything we do.
Strategic Advisory Committee
We added six additional members, four of whom work for community-based organizations and represent the communities we serve to our Strategic Advisory Committee, which provides strategic guidance and direction. They explore and advance key movement-wide topics that broadly impact member organizations and deepen our understanding and commitments around equity. One of these members is Hispanic Unity of Florida, a former Voices for Healthy Kids grantee for whom we provided technical assistance as they advocated for rights for immigrant families to be included in the COVID-19 federal relief package and for Medicaid and SNAP expansion. Building off our work in Indian Country and the relationships we’ve developed, there is now a representative, Tasha Fridia, from the Oglala-Sioux Tribe on the Strategic Advisory Committee. Another one of our new members is our chair, Donna Arnett, Ph.D., M.S.P.H., B.S.N., dean of the University of Kentucky College of Public Health.
Their perspectives, as recipients of our grants and services, as well as their on-the-ground knowledge about the communities we serve, are invaluable.
We also formed new collaborations to help us build leadership, on-the-ground connections, and better understanding of the lived experiences of communities, and make plans to turn our ideas into action.
Health Leaders for Healthy Kids
This is a collaborative of more than a dozen organizations representing health care providers across disciplines that have committed to lending their voices to local policy campaigns through community conversations, speaking to the media, testifying at public hearings, meeting with lawmakers, and more.
Sugary Drink/Healthy Hydration National Collaborative
This collaborative provides an inclusive convening space for local, state, tribal, and national stakeholders involved in efforts to reduce the consumption of sugary drinks and increase healthy hydration – especially among children in communities with the highest prevalence of diseases related to sugary drink consumption, most targeted by beverage companies, and most likely to lack access to appealing, no-cost drinking water.
Collaborations with Native American and Alaskan Native Communities
Voices for Healthy Kids’ work with Indian Country began as a singular Fertile Ground grant program and has grown to include voices and perspectives that impact our policymaking and grantmaking practices. Some of the new voices representing Native American perspectives and strengthening cultural understanding around policymaking are:
Ahniwake Rose, Executive Director of the Oklahoma Policy Institute, who serves as a technical assistance provider for our Indian Country funded campaigns
Tasha Fridia, who represents the Ogalala-Sioux on the Strategic Advisory Committee
Renee Goldtooth of Notah Begay 3 Foundation, who collaborates with our Policy Research Network workgroup
Rose James, PhD of the Urban Indian Health Institute, who serves as a Health Leaders for Healthy Kids member and Policy Research Network member
Innovation, Equity, and Exploration Workgroups
Our Innovation, Equity, and Exploration Workgroups (IEE) explore policy questions to advance advocacy innovation and health equity, look at how policy issues overlap, and support dialogue on social, demographic, policy, and other trends related to our priorities. This past year, the workgroups focused on:
Exploring equity in access to early care and education programs, Head Start, and Early Head Start Policies, including state discriminatory practices, led by the National Head Start Association.
Exploring how to implement and expand healthy school meals for all and the Community Eligibility Provisions (CEP) to offer free breakfast and lunch to all students. This included looking at districts that adopted the policies and identifying barriers and benefits of states and districts in pursuing either approach, led by the Tisch Center for Food, Education and Policy.
Developing a new policy lever on WIC access and needs, based on research and a landscape analysis conducted by the IEE workgroup focusing on state-by-state enrollment methods, led by Voices for Georgia’s Children.
Creating tribal policy lever recommendations to improve food quality and systems and meet early childhood education needs in Indigenous populations, and create a culturally appropriate advocacy resource, led by American Indian Cancer Foundation.
As always, the American Heart Association’s trusted science continues to play a foundational role in supporting Voices for Healthy Kids’ policy change efforts. It grows the evidence base for new and existing policies and provides trusted, evidence-based resources and materials to campaigns.
Recognizing gaps in our lived experiences of racial and socio-economic inequities, Voices for Healthy Kids better aligned our research network to reflect the needs of the communities we serve. This required recruiting new research experts from the University of Miami School of Medicine, Urban Indian Health Institute, Urban Institute, County Health Rankings, and the Council on Black Health, and then launching the equity-focused Policy Research Advisory Group. These experts are part of our larger Policy Research Network, formed in 2014, and include Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-funded research partners, American Heart Association professional volunteers (clinicians and scientists), academic institutions, and individual researchers.
We also expanded our pool of our research vendors to include a community of diverse evaluators who expertly drive and support the practice of culturally responsive and equitable evaluation.
Finally, this year, we also conducted research and authored studies about urgent public health issues, such as sugary drink consumption, that disproportionately impact communities of color and families with low incomes. Voices for Healthy Kids Senior Manager for Policy Research, Dr. Stephanie Scarmo co-authored with Drs. Jim Krieger, Sara Bleich, and Shu Wen Ng Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Reduction Policies: Progress and Promise, which reviewed policies that have been used to reduce sugary drink exposure and consumption.
Service to Campaigns
Voices for Healthy Kids has always hoped to help our collaborators and grantees build advocacy skills as they work to improve the health of children in communities across the country. In years past, our team has traveled around the country convening advocates and allies for trainings and conferences.
We had to learn how to work with grantees and organizations differently in 2020 and 2021. Pivoting quickly in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, we converted what were typically in-person gatherings into virtual trainings. This shift allowed us to be more inclusive and reach more people. We trained not just campaign leaders but also their coalition partners, members, and supporters. And we helped them learn how to train others in the community.
We were grateful we could apply our expertise in a way that reached far more people than ever before. Along the way, we worked with communities to help build strong, inclusive campaign infrastructure that extends far beyond a single policy win or issue. Campaigns are now equipped and emboldened to initiate and sustain conversations among supporters and policymakers about how we make communities healthier for children.
“It’s definitely increased our capacity. All of these topics are things that I can carry on to future campaigns. And for the rest of my career.”
— Voices for Healthy Kids Grantee(submitted anonymously)
"I think [training and technical assistance] allowed us to think in a more structured way about campaigns. It gave us the support to be able to learn the policy process and build the capacity of our organization.”
— Voices for Healthy Kids Grantee(submitted anonymously)
Highlights from the year include:
Developing a five-part training for Kids Forward Wisconsin and its early childhood education coalition partners. In Effectively Communicating with Lawmakers and Beyond, participants learned about the legislative process, tips for communicating their story as it relates to legislative requests, and tips for effectively communicating with lawmakers and beyond to advance campaign priorities. They also had the opportunity to hear directly from Wisconsin legislative staff and to apply their learnings by participating in mock interviews and meetings.
Working with the Women’s Fund of Greater Birmingham, we conducted a training series for the Women’s Policy Institute inaugural class of Fellows. The Fellows are community-based leaders who play a role in shaping and implementing policies that address the needs of women across the state. Fellows were trained in campaign planning, media advocacy, messaging, grassroots organizing, and social media.
Creating a Racial Equity in Public Policy Message Guide to share with collaborators and allies, and then launching a training series to support its use. This resource is designed to advance both equitable policies and conversations about structural racism with policymakers.
“That health equity messaging guide has been super helpful, and I’ve shared that around to some partners as well. And I think it’s really well done and it gives really clear and straightforward information about how to make sure that equity is front and center in your campaign.”
— Voices for Healthy Kids Grantee(submitted anonymously)
In FY 2020 - 2021, Voices for Healthy Kids awarded 57 grants to organizations advancing racial and health equity to improve the health of children, families, and communities.
December 2020: $2.5 million to 16 community health organizations in 14 states, Puerto Rico, and Washington, DC, to increase access to and incentives for healthy food and drinks and early education. The funding addresses economic security, such as ensuring children and families have access to quality, affordable early care and education, as well as food security and healthy eating by expanding state funding for SNAP, increasing access to no-cost water in schools, and building community support for healthy kids’ meals and taxes on sugary drinks.
June 2021: $1 million to five community organizations to promote nutrition and economic security in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania. The funding will help advance policies for improving health equity, with a focus on early care and education, food security and access to water in schools.
“These grants are one piece of our commitment to solving deeply sown societal issues that keep entire populations from reaping the health benefits of economic security, food security, and access to safe places to be active.”
— Donna Arnett, Ph.D., M.S.P.H., B.S.N., chair of Voices for Healthy Kids’ Strategic Advisory Committee, Dean of the University of Kentucky College of Public Health, and past president of the American Heart Association
Voices for Healthy Kids also launched a preemption policy fund to protect local democracies and advance equity. The fund, backed by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, and The Rockefeller Foundation, awards grants to organizations that protect the local right to advocate for and implement equitable policies and fight special industry groups that threaten the health and economic security of their communities.
We made significant changes to the way we approach our grantmaking, too—using data tools to inform where we fund, whom we fund, and how we evaluate grant applications and success.
Where We Fund
Using a detailed rubric based on data, we are able to prioritize areas in the country to fund: awarding grants to the geographies experiencing the greatest health disparities as measured by childhood obesity rate, percentage of the people of color, percentage of children under the federal poverty level and the percentage of children who are food insecure.
Who We Fund
Voices for Healthy Kids believes in lived experiences as important qualifications in community led policy change work. We also acknowledge, currently and historically, that organizations led by people of color face more barriers and receive less funding than white led organizations. As breaking down racial and health disparities is key to the Voices for Healthy Kids mission, we are committed to increasing funding to organizations and campaigns that have leadership that is Black, African American, Latino, Native American, Alaskan Native, Hawaiian Native, Pacific Islander, and Asian American.
How We Evaluate
In addition to prioritizing location and evaluating leadership diversity, grant applicants are evaluated based on their potential to reduce health disparities, engagement and power building in communities most impacted, experience in changing policy, understanding of the historical context of the issues and inequities.
Policy Priorities
Voices for Healthy Kids focuses our efforts on the places that have been disinvested in for far too long: Black, African American, Latino, Native American, Alaskan Native, Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, and Asian American communities and families with low income. We advance equitable policies that make the places where kids and their families live, learn, and play healthier. These policies make healthier options more accessible and affordable for all families. We work to:
Making healthy, affordable food easily available and decreasing the consumption of sugary beverages
Without access to affordable healthy food and drinks, a nutritious diet and good health are out of reach. We support state, local, and tribal policies that increase access to healthy food and beverages, make it easier to eat healthy, and drive industry innovation to improve the food and drinks we all need.
Sugary Drinks
In 2020, we conducted message research, to help inform our advocacy efforts to decrease sugary drink consumption. We turned our findings into several messaging resources and a complementary creative suite that help advocates talk about the long-term health outcomes of sugary drinks, how sugary drink tax revenue can support community programs, and the unjust marketing to communities of color and families with low income. We took the resources on a virtual roadshow, training advocates and organizations across the country in how to use them. For example, we presented at the Center for Science and Public Interest’s 2021 Sugary Drink Summit, which brought together public health experts and advocates working to reduce the consumption of sugary drinks.
In spring 2021, we built off that research to learn more about Latino adults’ attitudes about sugary drinks and campaigns to reduce consumption of those drinks. The findings from the national survey can be used by campaigns to help engage the Latino community in these efforts.
“We've been using these [sugary drink] resources and find them extremely helpful! “
— Jane Kramer, Co-founder of Sugar Smart Coalition, Founder of Michigan Advocates for Healthy Checkouts
These tools were also informed by our work with grantees who have fought hard to change policy in their communities. Advocates in Cleveland, Columbus, and Toledo were successful in getting policies or ordinances passed to make healthy drink options the default option on kids’ meals in restaurants.
A tax on sugary drinks and junk food, originally established in 2014 and set to expire in 2020, was extended in the Navajo Nation, particularly important to address health concerns impacting the Diné community. It is the first such policy in the world, serving as an example of tribal sovereignty to support community wellness, and revenue taxes have funded more than 1,300 community-selected wellness projects across the Navajo Nation, including community fitness classes, greenhouses, youth clubs, clean water initiatives, Navajo language and culture classes, and more.
Other cities, like Philadelphia, celebrated sugary drink tax anniversaries. Since Philadelphia implemented the beverage tax, there have been notable health impacts, such as a 38% reduction in sugary drink purchases according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Funding from the sugary drink tax has been used to support thousands of pre-K slots, more than a dozen community schools, and improvements to parks and recreation centers. The city focuses funding in areas lacking child care options and communities with greater numbers of families with low incomes.
Cities like Seattle have been able to address hunger with funding from sugary drink tax revenue. Last year, a community-driven campaign directed tax revenues to help feed families who were food insecure during COVID-19. Voices for Healthy Kids also awarded grants to help partners in over a dozen states push for extending food assistance benefits. See the Special Report: COVID-19 Rapid Response Grantees for more.
Ensuring early childhood programs and services are accessible and of high quality for families with low incomes
The more frequently infants and toddlers can be in healthy and supportive learning environments, the more likely they will be emotionally, mentally, and physically healthy and thrive, and of course, their parents will be supported. We fund and support early childhood development opportunities at the state and local levels, with a focus on children growing up in communities historically underserved or even excluded from economic opportunity.
For example, in FY 2020 - 2021, we supported advocates in Multnomah County, Oregon, to establish a “preschool for all” program, which prioritizes the community’s toddlers and children who currently have the least access, children who speak languages other than English, and children experiencing poverty. The program also provides special support for children with developmental delays and disabilities while building toward a fully universal system, and provides up to six hours per day of tuition-free, developmentally appropriate early learning, reflecting best practices.
And, next door in Washington state, Voices for Healthy Kids continued to support advocates who worked for multiple years to develop an Early Head Start pilot program that grew into $18.7-million-funded Early Head Start program, as well as to codify the program into state law.
In St. Louis, voters approved Proposition R, which will raise $2.3 million annually for early childhood programs and services each year, equitably allocated to programs serving infants and toddlers in the city’s most divested communities - a policy change made possible by Voices for Healthy Kids grantee WEPOWER.
And, most recently, our grantmaking and support extended to increase accessibility for child care workers in Colorado. This is particularly important, as early care and education centers have been closed or are severely understaffed as result of the COVID-19 pandemic, and many people — particularly the women and people of color who typically work in child care jobs — in the U.S. are unemployed. Now, barriers to obtaining professional and commercial child care licenses have been removed for undocumented immigrants, a huge victory for efforts to dismantle employment discrimination, and in turn, support working parents and the Colorado workforce and economy.
Preventing states, industry, and special interests from blocking local actions that promote health, well-being, and equity
Local governments are uniquely positioned to meet the needs of the people in their communities by reflecting local context and values. Depending on the community, that could mean passing local laws to improve quality of life through sugary drink taxes, paid sick leave, smoke-free worksites, limited use of plastic bags, or equal rights for the LGBTQ+ community.
Voices for Healthy Kids supports coalitions that defend local governments’ ability to promote health, well-being, and equity against efforts that would allow the state to prevent local action. This kind of state and corporate interference is often referred to as preemption.
It’s not an easy task to define preemption -- and it’s even more difficult to shape a new narrative about it and motivate audiences to allow for local communities to make their own decisions about the issues that affect them. With insights from messaging research, Voices for Healthy Kids developed a message manual to help campaigns talk about preemption effectively, as well as a complementary creative toolkit. As we do with all of our messaging and toolkit projects, the materials were supported by several trainings on how to use them.
Improving schools’ health and wellness policies and practices
Children — no matter where they live or what grade they are in — benefit from healthy food and clean water. That’s why we are committed to building healthy school environments. We do this by promoting good nutrition and access to safe and appealing water at no cost in all schools, especially those that have been historically under-resourced or excluded from economic opportunity.
In FY 2020 - 2021, Voices for Healthy Kids funded the California Association of Food Banks and the Center for Ecoliteracy, which led California to become the first state in the nation to permanently adopt free school meals for all K–12 students.
Voices for Healthy Kids also funded and supported four campaigns that advocated for improved access to water at schools in Tennessee,Arkansas, Texas, and Mississippi. Now, all new schools undergoing major renovations or newly built in Arkansas and Hamilton County, Tennessee will require water bottle filling stations. In Austin, Texas, public schools will include more water bottle filling stations in indoor and outdoor common spaces. And in Brookhaven, Mississippi, both staff and students are now allowed to carry water bottles.
Special Report: COVID-19 Rapid Response Grant Outcomes
Last spring, Voices for Healthy Kids quickly developed a new grant opportunity to provide rapid response dollars to help address the health and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic; $1 million was awarded to organizations across 19 states, Puerto Rico, and the Lummi Nation in Washington state. Many of the organizations support communities hardest hit by the pandemic so they, too, needed to adapt quickly. With the COVID-19 Rapid Response Grants, these organizations were able to direct resources to the compounding hardships facing children and families around the country.
Acting with Urgency
Recognizing the devastating impact of COVID-19, the community organizations mobilized with purpose and urgency — focusing their advocacy on the health, food, housing, and economic insecurities intensified by the pandemic. Not only did the COVID-19 Rapid Response Grants provide direct dollars to support the work; they also created connections across communities and among advocates working on similar issues across the country. This enabled grantees to collaborate in new ways and expanded the Voices for Healthy Kids network to include new organizations that remain active in our network.
Addressing Health Inequities
Grantees pushed to address health inequities, such as making COVID-19 testing and other critical health services more accessible in communities of color. Some organizations were able to have an impact just a few short months after grants were awarded, including grantees who advocated for the expansion of Medicaid in Missouri and Oklahoma. Following on the work of grantees in these two states, advocates in North Carolina and Texas have also been raising public awareness and civic engagement around healthcare needs, laying the groundwork for Medicaid expansion.
Improving Access to Healthy Food
As COVID-19 exposed critical weaknesses in our food systems, grantees in several states also advanced policies to help children and families access healthy food. For example:
Along with others across the country, Alabama Arise successfully engaged federal policymakers to push for an increase in monthly SNAP benefits and an extension of pandemic EBT benefits. At the state level, Nebraska Appleseed led a diverse coalition to push state policymakers to adopt the federal pandemic EBT option to provide food assistance resources to tens of thousands of households across Nebraska.
Cultiva La Salud forged enduring community partnerships that allowed them to continue offering school meals to children in four school districts in California during the summer of 2020. By identifying and removing barriers to participation in school meal programs, their approach ensured that the greatest number of children over the greatest number of days received summer meals. Their efforts over the summer had a positive impact on fall meal operations in the targeted school districts, too.
The Hawaii Appleseed Center for Law and Economic Justice launched a campaign to apply the state’s funding from the federal CARES Act purchase of local produce by food banks. This campaign not only responded to an immediate need due to the pandemic; it also initiated a longer-term conversation about the role food nonprofits play in building resilient community-based food systems.
“This award afforded us the opportunity to bring together a very valuable partnership. Because of it, we could gather initial data from school districts and parents, which was foundational to our continued advocacy related to promoting school meals.”
- Cultiva La Salud
ACCESS Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services
Alabama Arise
American Diabetes Association
American Heart Association
Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights
Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families
Arkansas Hunger Relief Alliance
Beyond Housing
California Association of Food Banks
California Walks
Center for Health Progress
Center for Rural Affairs
Childhood Obesity Prevention Coalition (COPC)
Coalition for Social Justice Ed Fund
Community Farm Alliance
Community Health Council of Wyandotte County
Cultiva La Salud
DC Greens
Dine' Food Sovereignty Alliance
Equality Ohio Education Fund
Every Texan (formerly Center for Public Policy Priorities)
First Nations Development Institute
Fusion Partnership fiscal sponsor for SPACEs In Action
Groundwork Center for Resilient Communities
Hawai‘i Public Health Institute
Hawaii Appleseed Center for Law and Economic Justice
HealthMPowers
Hispanic Unity of Florida, Inc.
Hunger Action Los Angeles
Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR)
Kids Forward (formerly Wisconsin Council on Children and Families)
Lhaqtemish Foundation
MA Food System Collaborative
Maine Consumers for Affordable Health Care
Make the Road New York
Maryland Medical Society - MedChi
Michigan Chapter American Academy of Pediatric
Mississippi Low Income Child Care Initiative
NAACP Maryland State Conference
Nebraska Appleseed
New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty
Oklahoma Institute for Child Advocacy
Oral Health Kansas
Pinnacle Prevention
Policy Institute for the Children of Louisiana
Rhode Island Public Health Institute
Rural Economic Development Center, Inc.
Small Business Majority Foundation Inc.
SPUR
Stand Up Nashville
Statewide Alignment Group (SWAG)
Tenants and Workers United
Texas Organizing Project Education Fund
The Food Trust
The Women's Fund of Greater Birmingham
Tobacco Free Kansas Coalition
Together Louisiana
Voices for Georgia's Children
Washington State Association of Head Start and ECEAP
WEPOWER
Wholespire
Youth Development Institute
This link is provided for convenience only and is not an endorsement of either the linked-to entity or any product or service.
Nancy Brown
Chief Executive Officer
American Heart Association
Lori Fresina
Executive Director
Voices for Healthy Kids