Avondale Children Thrive is one of 19 partnerships selected to participate in the nationwide BUILD Health Challenge, a unique national program focusing on bold, upstream, integrated, local, and data-driven projects that can improve community health. The BUILD Health Challenge grant provides funding, capacity building support, and access to a national peer learning network to enhance collaborative partnerships here locally to address our community’s most pressing health challenges.
The Cincinnati-specific project will focus on improving the health of expectant mothers and children under the age of 6 in the Avondale neighborhood with three aims. First, recruiting and training a network of neighborhood health champions. Second, coaching young families on heath topics ranging from breastfeeding to early education. Third, the partnership will foster a healthier neighborhood environment with a new full-service grocery store, consumer incentives for healthy foods and smoking cessation programs.
Avondale Children Thrive is comprised of The Community Builders—a leading nonprofit developer of mixed income housing, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and The Cincinnati Health Department. These organizations will work together, with guidance from BUILD advisors, to identify and implement innovative solutions to community challenges. Matching funds of $500,000 from Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, combined with BUILD’s $250,000 two-year grant, will further extend the partnership’s capacity to improve maternal and child health in Avondale.
For more information about Avondale Children Thrive, contact Stephanie Anderson Garrett at sgarrett@tcbinc.org. For more information about the BUILD Health Challenge, visit buildhealthchallenge.org, go to Facebook.com/BUILDHealthChall or follow @BUILD_Health.
