Last week, GE chose the Harris County BUILD Project in North Pasadena, TX and eight other U.S. cities as winners of the Healthy Cities Leadership Challenge. All the winners were awarded $25,000 in funding over the course of a one-year program, and access to an innovative learning collaborative with peer support from experienced community health leaders, preeminent thought leaders and academic researchers in population health, and other business and industry leaders in this field. For the next year, GE will be facilitating mentorship and discussion among many organizations across the country that are working to make their cities healthier.
The award was announced at the GE Healthy Cities Leadership Academy in upstate New York, which was attended by a representative from each of the Harris County BUILD Partnership’s coalition members, including Brighter Bites, Houston Food Bank, local businesses, government entities, and nonprofits. Brighter Bites Senior Program DirectorMike Pomeroy attended as a representative of Brighter Bites.
According to the Healthy Living Matters website, “The BUILD Health Challenge is a multi-funder collaboration that is supporting 18 communities that are collaboratively taking Bold, Upstream, Integrated, Local, and Data-driven approaches to moving resources, attention and action to the primary determinants of population health. In order to drive sustainable change in the improvement of community health and promotion of health equity, the BUILD Health Challenge seeks to increase the number and effectiveness of hospital-community-public health collaborations.” North Pasadena, TX is one of these 18 communities.
