Note: This post has been updated to promote the 2024 Culture of Health Prize call for applications.
Two authors discuss what community means to them and describe an opportunity to apply for the Culture of Health Prize which honors communities that foster health and wellbeing for all.
Katrina: Looking back on my childhood, it’s clear that my community shaped my happiest memories, cradling my family and friends in safety and security. We had each other's backs. I’ll never forget the feeling of freedom I had as a 10-year-old riding my bike to town, past protected forests and neighborhoods on the outskirts of town. We had one car that my dad drove to work. Now I understand that without the early rails-to-trails bike path, my rural community would have been isolated. But then all I thought of was the joy of riding, the thrill of independence. Although the people in my neighborhood were on a journey out of poverty, the land trust we lived on meant eviction wasn’t an issue. When harder times hit, families leaned on each other instead of banks or predatory lenders. We each contributed to and built a community loan fund that helped ease the hard times. Now, I might call this the conditions of place. But then I just called it my community.
Ana Maria: Orlando, Florida, is filled with people who work all day and night making restaurants, theme parks, and hotels run. My family immigrated to a neighborhood that was full of others like us who’d come from the Dominican Republic, or Puerto Rico, Haiti, and Central America.
I learned early on that the magic of community is far greater than what you might find in a theme park. Immigrant communities know what it is to care for each other and fill in the gaps systems left in place. As a kid, everyone knew the uncle you’d go to when you needed help with math homework, or the auntie who had her driver's license and could give you and your mom a ride. We followed the smell of spices toward dinner at any one of our neighbors' homes. We translated for our elders, paid friends’ bills when things were tight, and cared for each other’s children. Today I hear about mutual aid and think: we’ve always done that. At the time we just called it taking care of each other.
Celebrating Communities That are Prioritizing Health Equity
Since its launch in 2013, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) Culture of Health Prize (“the Prize”) has recognized more than 60 communities across the country. The Prize serves to inspire change and highlight community-led solutions that show us that another world is possible, one where barriers to health are broken down through community power-building, cross-sector partnerships, policy reform, systems change, and the reclamation of cultural practices.
Partnership within communities is at the heart of the Prize. Rather than awarding a single organization in each community the honor, the Prize recognizes diverse, cross-sector partnerships across multiple organizations that center people who are most affected by local or regional health inequities.
We award the Prize to place-based communities that include, but are not limited to, whole cities, towns, tribes, reservations, counties, or regions. Please see the call for applications for complete eligibility guidelines. Previous Prize winners are creating conditions to enable community residents to reach their best health and wellbeing, such as access to healthy local foods, safe and affordable housing, economic opportunity, clean water and air, and transportation.
Can your community’s story show what’s possible when we work together? Then apply for the RWJF Culture of Health Prize and join a dynamic network of Prize-winning communities!
Applying for the Prize
Communities are best positioned to define for themselves the solutions they need to make racial and health equity a reality. As such, the Prize selection criteria intentionally focuses on the journey—including strategies and other guideposts of progress—as much as the results your community has achieved together and the ways you are tracking them. The Prize recognizes communities that are:
- Addressing structural racism and other structural injustices to advance opportunity, health, and equity.
- Committing to lasting changes in policy, systems, and financing that improve community conditions and center people directly impacted by the inequity addressed.
- Working in partnership across sectors, and elevating the expertise and solutions held by people with firsthand experience of the inequities being addressed.
- Engaging in work that preserves and celebrates community through cultural activities and practices that envision and advance a more just future.
- Making the most of available resources to ensure the effort can endure over time.
- Measuring and sharing progress in culturally relevant ways.
Prize winners join a network of incredible alumni who are truly building a Culture of Health across the country. Can the story of your community’s work inspire others to take action and create a healthier future for everyone?
RWJF is accepting applications for the Prize until June 3, 2024. Winning communities will each receive $250,000 in unrestricted Prize money, national promotion of their work, access to a network of other Prize communities working to advance health equity, and more.
About the Authors
Katrina Badger is a program officer with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation focusing on efforts supporting work building healthy, equitable communities.
Ana Maria De La Rosa, is a managing co-director of Healthy & Equitable Communities at Health Resources in Action. Her career is rooted in supporting communities that historically have been oppressed and marginalized through grantmaking, organizing, technical assistance, and capacity building.