Third Sector New England, Inc. (fiscal sponsor for Healthy Places by Design)

Through its Building Healthy Communities priority area, NYHealth has supported neighborhood-level approaches to improve access to healthy, affordable food and to activate spaces to encourage more physical activity.

To sustain the progress that has been made in these communities, it is important that neighborhood grantees—known as community conveners—have the tools and capacity they need to maintain and expand their initiatives and goals. Grantees have expressed a particular need for support in advocating for local policy change and solutions and effectively communicating their wins, goals, needs, and value. Strengthening these efforts will help ensure the long-term sustainability of the achievements and place-based work in each neighborhood. In 2021, NYHealth awarded Healthy Places by Design a grant to continue providing support and coaching for community conveners and to identify key lessons learned from the Healthy Neighborhoods Fund initiative.

Under this grant, Healthy Places by Design identified and highlighted recommendations from the community conveners’ work during the Healthy Neighborhoods Fund initiative that informed future efforts to improve food access and activate safe spaces for physical activity. It continued to provide one-on-one support to the Healthy Neighborhoods Fund’s community conveners. It collected lessons learned from grantee coordinators and shared its findings online through blog posts and social media to inform the work of funders and community leaders that were interested in NYHealth’s approach to building healthy communities.