Established in 2007 to address the social factors influencing the health of young families in Rice County, Growing Up Healthy is a coalition of organizations and agencies serving families and residents.

Vision: We believe that all children, regardless of income, immigration, and social status, are entitled to a healthy start, which includes knowledge of and access to quality and affordable social services, health services, early education and care, and housing.

Mission: Growing Up Healthy seeks to increase the level of community connectedness experienced by marginalized families in Rice County with children under the age of 5.

Strategies: We have and continue to approach this mission through three interrelated areas of work:

· The work of our community organizers (“Neighborhood Leaders”): These leaders are tasked with communicating regularly with their neighbors to find out what the issues are in their neighborhood. Then they work in their neighborhood teams, with consultation from the Coordinator, to develop and implement solutions to the identified issues. Often this includes feedback to the coalition partner organizations, requiring individual organizations to evaluate their internal policies, or requiring the partners to work together in new ways to meet the changing needs of local residents.

· Increased community education and awareness about the social determinants of health: Our efforts here have focused on changing community attitudes toward low-income, immigrant, and marginalized families in Rice County. We have utilized the documentary series “Unnatural Causes”, which discusses the social determinants of health, and to date over 600 individuals in Rice County have seen all or part of the series and discussed the local implications.

· Systems change: To identify and address policies and structures that can improve the lives of young children and their families. This systems view can be within a single organization (e.g. evaluating an internal policy with regards to having an interpreter on call), across multiple organizations in a single sector (e.g. farmers, social service organizations, and individuals passionate about local food systems working together to bring the EBT card readers to farmer’s markets), or across multiple sectors (e.g. social service organizations, city staff, youth-based organizations, and businesses coming together to define transportation needs in the community). As stated above, this work is directly informed by the work of the neighborhood leaders.