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About Us Our mission is to transform the way organizations work together across the health, community development, and finance sectors to more effectively reduce poverty, advance racial equity, and improve health in neighborhoods across the United States.

Our Purpose: We uplift community-led solutions and accelerate cross-sector investments in persistently marginalized communities to create healthier, more equitable, and thriving places



Our Vision: Communities where all people can live fulfilling and healthy lives



Nearly one-fifth of Americans live in low-income communities with fewer opportunities to achieve healthy and rewarding lives. Today we know that factors related to health, employment, education, housing, and neighborhoods are linked. Place matters and in many cases your zip code is more important than your genetic code in determining your health.

Our neighborhoods shape the opportunities we have, and those opportunities shape the choices open to us around our health and wealth. Many of these neighborhoods have been shaped by the impact of systemic racism and historically exclusionary policies. Since many of the root causes of poverty and poor health are the same, coordinated action is needed to increase investments that will support building communities where all people can live healthy and prosperous lives.

Our Values: Racial Equity and Community Voice

We believe that it is important to recognize racial equity as a key driver of health and wellbeing and racism as a public health crisis.

Each institution must ask itself what role they will play in removing barriers to achieving equity and explicitly maintain race, equity, diversity and inclusion at the core of this cross-sector work. We must tackle racist and exclusionary policies and practices that perpetuate health disparities. Advancing the shared goals of racial justice is essential for cross-sector collaborations to successfully impact the root causes of the health inequities we see today in historically marginalized communities, both urban and rural.

 

We believe that paying particular attention to who has decision-making power for health investments and how decisions are made is critical.

It helps ensure that communities, especially those such as historically marginalized BIPOC communities, are the beneficiaries of community level improvements, building community resilience, and removing barriers to prosperity.

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BHPN’s National Advisory Council includes leaders and practitioners who are helping to realize our mission and vision. Through collaboration with these individuals, and organizations and institutions who share our vision, BHPN is able to make life-altering change for communities affected by poverty and poor health. 

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Our History

Douglas Jutte, a pediatrician working in East Palo Alto, CA, knew that healthcare delivery would not be enough to improve health outcomes in the neighborhood he served. He realized that by bridging together community development and health, these sectors would be more effective in reducing poverty, advancing racial equity, and improving community health. In 2014, with the support of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, he launched Build Healthy Places Network with the recognition that a national network promoting cross-sector collaboration was critical for ensuring that all people have the opportunity to live healthy and rewarding lives.

Built on the Federal Reserve System’s Healthy Communities Initiative

Our work builds on the Healthy Communities Initiative, a multi-year effort led by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to deepen cross-sector collaboration. This series of conferences at regional Federal Reserve Banks around the country bring leaders from across sectors together to examine how where people live, learn, work and play affects health. Over 35 Healthy Communities conferences have been convened around the country since 2010.


Informed by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Commission to Build a Healthier America

Our work is guided by the 2014 recommendations of the RWJF Commission to Build a Healthier America, which called for action to “support and speed the integration of finance, health and community development to revitalize neighborhoods and improve health.”