This important tool was developed to help Promise Neighborhood communities and the field at large better understand the external conditions and developmental milestones that are needed to build the cradle to career continuum and to achieve the goals/outcomes set forth in Promise Neighborhoods. The tool illustrates the developmental pathways necessary to achieve the Promise Neighborhoods vision.

This guide articulates how a focus on health equity is critical to the success of the Promise Neighborhoods program. It describes how Promise Neighborhoods have used a disciplined results-based approach to improve community environments to support health and provides communities with best practices and resources they can use to achieve population-level results for children, ensuring they are healthy and ready to learn. 

Details Market Creek's planning, design, and implementation process, and highlights the importance of resident involvement in this groundbreaking community development project where Market Creek Plaza, is among the nation's first real estate development projects to be designed, built, and ultimately owned by community residents.

 This report highlights key recommendations for how communities can work together to make sure that everyone, regardless of income or race, has access to healthy food, and  discusses the unequal access to healthy foods that exists in communities of color and for low-income communities in San José.Food access is important to the health and well-being of all of our families.

Advocacy efforts to improve access to healthy food at the local, state, and federal level have led to the creation of financing programs to support healthy food retail in underserved communities nationwide.

One key effort, Voices for Healthy Kids Initiative, led by the American Heart Association and The Food Trust, is advocating for state-wide policies to promote healthy food financing and corner store programs in key states across the country. This webinar will provide an overview of the Voices for Healthy Kids Initiative and discuss how advocates and community leaders can tap into resources to support state-level healthy food access efforts. Experts will discuss key successes from the field and share best practices.

For the Tohono O'odham Tribe in southwestern and central Arizona, food is the foundation of health, culture, community, family, and economies. Since 1996, the grassroots community organization Tohono O’odham Community Action (TOCA) has been dedicated to improving the health, cultural vitality, sustainability, and economic revitalization for the Tohono O’odham Nation.

This fall, thanks to TOCA’s new school food enterprise, Desert Rain Food Services, 700 children on the Tohono O'odham Nation will be served healthier school food sourced from local farmers. TOCA received a $300,000 Healthy Food Financing Initiative (HFFI) grant to pilot a school food service enterprise that supports healthier eating and a strong indigenous food economy.

The Healthy Incentives Pilot (HIP) tested a way of making fruits and vegetables more affordable for participants in the Supplemental Nutrition Assis­tance Program (SNAP). Under HIP, SNAP partici­pants received a financial incentive for purchasing fruits and vegetables. The HIP evaluation used a random assignment research design.

Specifically, 7,500 Hampden County SNAP households were randomly selected to partic­ipate in HIP, while the remaining 47,595 households continued to receive SNAP benefits as usual. The final evaluation report presents findings on the impacts of HIP on fruit and vegetable consumption and spending, the processes involved in implementation and operating HIP, impacts on stakeholders, and the costs associated with the pilot.

SNAP allows households to deduct unreimbursed medical expenses over $35 per month from their income in calculating their net income for SNAP purposes to more realistically reflect the income they have available to purchase food.  This, in turn, could potentially qualify them for higher SNAP benefits. While the medical expense deduction plays an important role in ensuring that households with high medical costs receive adequate benefits, it is underutilized.