Place-Based Health Through Policies, Systems and Practices

FY2018 continued Vitalyst’s momentum toward fostering healthy community outcomes across a range of high-impact sectors, including food, housing and transportation. It is all part of a two-pronged approach that combines the context-setting effects of Live Well Arizona with catalytic healthy communities investments.

In FY2018, quality affordable food and the systems continued to be a major focus for Vitalyst, along with efforts in transportation, community health impacts, and the urban heat island effect. We:

• Capitalized on Vitalyst’s successful pilot investment in Double Up Food Bucks Arizona – which had already been used to leverage additional funding from local and federal sources – to justify and secure a permanent state appropriation.
• Continued support for and participation in the Maricopa County Food Systems Coalition (MarCo), with ongoing assistance for its statewide food systems assessment, including development and hiring of a Food Coalition Fellow at Vitalyst to support Coalition strategies.
• Supported development and launch of the Arizona Food Systems Network, a statewide collaboration of local, state and regional food systems advocates, practitioners and leaders that emerged from last year’s Snapshot of Arizona Food Policy Coalitions.
• Co-funded and supported completion of the City of Phoenix’s Choice Neighborhoods Health Impact Assessments, documenting community-driven insights and recommendations that will directly impact resident health now and into the future.
• Continued to serve and support efforts to realize Phoenix’s Complete Streets policy and implementation future.
• Influenced the policy discussion around urban heat island effects with the City of Phoenix, broadening the discussion beyond cooling centers and into systemic issues to reduce heat retention, e.g. changing building materials and increasing green infrastructure.

While “the work” of healthy community design is never done, it is encouraging to recognize that Vitalyst has gained new partners, has been more able to establish higher-level and broader context discussions, and partnered to achieve new breakthroughs each year.