Recently, several NJHA member organizations were announced as participants in the BUILD Health Challenge, two-year endeavors to transform health locally.

Nineteen communities were awarded a total of $8 million to support multi-sector local partnerships in each community aimed at addressing a variety of upstream factors such as transportation planning, quality of housing and workplace tobacco policies to improve community health. Each community selected identified local hospital partners that will collectively add more than $5 million in both monetary and in-kind support to the projects.

New Jersey BUILD communities include:

• Forward Franklin: North Jersey Health Collaborative, Atlantic Health System and the Sussex County Department of Health and Human Services.
• New Brunswick Healthy Housing Collaborative: New Brunswick Tomorrow, Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, Saint Peter’s University Hospital and the Middlesex County Office of Health Services.
• Trenton Transformation: A Safe & Healthy Corridor: Trenton Health Team, Capital Health, St. Francis Medical Center and City of Trenton Department of Health and Human Services.

“Everyone in America should have the opportunity to be healthy, and achieving this vision requires moving beyond prescriptions and pills – to upstream social, physical and economic influences on health,” said Emily Yu, executive director of the BUILD Health Challenge. “It’s exciting to see how organizations, residents and those outside of traditional health spaces are embracing a shared sense of responsibility for community health. This shift in thinking and application of bold, localized and data-driven approaches is transforming the future of health.”

This is the second cohort of communities selected to participate in the BUILD Health Challenge. Partnering organizations include the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and New Jersey Health Initiatives.