Congratulations to our 2015 Healthy People, Healthy Places grant recipients. Con Alma awarded about $87,000 in mini-grants as part of its Healthy People, Healthy Places initiative, a partnership of organizations working together to increase access to healthy food and improve the built environment so it is easier for people to be active in their communities. The initiative’s goal is to advance health equity, when everyone has an equal chance at leading a healthy life regardless of their zip code, ethnicity or income.
Amigos Bravos
Los Alamos, Region 6, $8,000
Funds will help Amigos Bravos with their organizing community participation in New Mexico to oppose changes that are currently being proposed to downgrade New Mexico’s water quality standards which are some of the strongest in the nation. The proposed lax standards have the potential to affect the health of New Mexico’s largest and most indigenous communities that rely on a sustainable supply of clean water for drinking, agriculture and recreation. The proposed rollbacks would also affect native plant species and wildlife that are crucial to rural and native communities.
Bernalillo County Place Matters
Bernalillo, Region 3, $8,000
Funding will build on the first year of developing a land-use toolkit that is specifically designed to increase engagement of local and indigenous community members in leadership roles and decision-making related to land-use and food access policies that affect their health. BPM will be conducting a series of workshops in Bernalillo and Dona Ana Counties to help communities identify specific opportunities to engage in active roles in policy development and environmental changes.
First Choice Community Healthcare
Albuquerque, Region 3, $7,000
First Choice is developing a wellness ecosystem at The South Valley Community Commons which has the goal to improve health and equity by creating built environments and systems that promote active living and healthy eating. This ecosystem will be a unique approach to addressing social determinants of health and will include: Health Leadership High School, an early childhood development center, wellness center, community farm and teaching kitchen/restaurant. The grant will provide the resources for First Choice to gather community stakeholders in a series of design sessions to begin programming and designing the ecosystem to be sustainable.
La Familia Medical Center
Santa Fe, Region 2, $7,000
Recognizing the many benefits of community gardens to healthy lifestyles, LFMC will build on existing partner relationships with multiple agencies and the City of Santa Fe to revitalize local gardening traditions, increase the capacity of community gardens, and facilitate the intergenerational transfer of knowledge about health foods and their cultivation. This culturally appropriate community garden project will serve low-income Latino/Hispanic communities in Santa Fe’s food deserts and will engage community garden members to organize their communities, advocate for policy change, improve the built environment, and overcome barriers to access to fresh foods and healthy lifestyles.
La Semilla Food Center
Anthony, Region 5, $7,000
By investing in communities and food access, this project seeks to alleviate equity boundaries related to food access and health, and to promote wellness through access to nutritious, locally grown, culturally significant foods. This project will engage communities in the process of food access assessment and generating community-based recommendations for incentivizing, implementing and promoting healthy food access.
McKinley Community PLACE MATTERS
Gallup, Region 1, $7,000
The Red Water Pond Community on the Navajo Nation has experienced and lives with the impacts of uranium mining and milling since the 1960s. This grant will help community members with developing a reuse plan that will integrate health components by gaining community input into how their land is remediated and provide technical assistance to community members so they understand the health risks related to working in the mines or secondary exposure.
National Center for Frontier Communities
Silver City, Region 5, $12,000
Working with the Southwest New Mexico Regional Food Policy Council that was funded in 2014 with HPHP funding, this project will focus on one of three top priorities identified by the Council which was to “Ensure people in the four county region have enough healthy food by identifying what is enough and what is healthy and securing the resources to fulfill the need.” The goal is to increase nutritious food available to low income families by accomplishing the following objectives; implementing a system that allows local food distributors/pantries to quantify the amount of nutritious versus non-nutritious food and incorporate food quality as a success measure, advocate for tax credits to farmers who donate healthy food, and implement a food education and information campaign that will result in healthy food donations.
New Mexico Voices for Children
Albuquerque, Region 6, $8,800
This funding will enable NM Voices to convene cross-sector stakeholders focused on nutrition, obesity, hunger, public health, poverty, and agricultural economic development to identify and advocate for statewide and systems-level food access policies that can multiply and incentivize the usage of SNAP dollars at all farmers markets across New Mexico. We will conduct research, disseminate findings, and advocate for policies that can; increase access of nutritious, fresh and locally grown foods to low-income and underserved populations (including rural and tribal areas), improve food security for SNAP recipients; and help improve economic development for community farmers selling their produce locally.
Notah Begay III Foundation
Albuquerque, Region 6, $8,000
NB3F will help build the organizational and programmatic capacity of 10 New Mexico tribes and Native American nonprofit organizations that are addressing Native childhood obesity and type 2 diabetes in their communities. The training and technical assistance will result in more effective programs to conduct community health assessments and increase community members’ access to physical fitness activities, healthy and affordable foods, and nutrition education. Organizational capacity building will strengthen administrative management and systems, emphasize staff and board development, and enhance community engagement.
The Volunteer Center of Grant County
Silver City, Region 5, $7,000
In the third year of building a permanent regional food policy council in the southwest New Mexico, VCG will focus again on rebuilding community self-reliance and agricultural traditions. Through educational outreach to organizations and cultural events in communities and rural areas plus hosting expert forums on targeted pressing issues, they will continue to help Grant County residents, including communities of color, collaborate to influence policies that promote a built environment friendly to nutritious local food and health security and generate workable solutions.
Zuni Youth Enrichment Project
Zuni, Region 1, $7,000
Zuni Youth Enrichment Program continues in this second year of funding with their aim to strengthen the future leaders of Zuni and their families by culturally connecting them to the rich linguistic, spiritual, and cultural traditions of Zuni agriculture. The project was just granted tribal land to expand their successful gardens so that they can meet the need of over 800 community members that use the gardens. This preservation and enhancement of cultural and spiritual assets, A:ho’ A:wan Doyenkakya Dehwanne’s will empower the next generation to lead healthier, more culturally-connected, and more fulfilling lives.
