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Focus Area

Community Health Ecosystems

Community health ecosystems are more than the infrastructure required to ensure public health. They include the environments, people, relationships, practices and services that sustain safe and holistic health systems. To create equitable and thriving communities, we need to strengthen and sustain local health ecosystems that support community engagement, include high-quality systems of care and ensure community safety.

Communities are multi-dimensional and exist at the intersections of place, race, ethnicity, gender, disability, immigration and legal status. We believe that strong community health ecosystems reflect an array of local assets and respond to diverse local needs.

Our goal is to leverage our investments, learning and influence as catalysts to support community health ecosystems that create opportunities for people and communities to achieve health equity.

Through this work, we aim to strengthen community health ecosystems that are accessible, informed by individuals and families, honor intergenerational expertise, reflect cross-sector leadership, provide high-quality coordinated services, create economic opportunity and advance racial equity.

Together with our partners and the communities they serve, we work to support equitable community-based participatory decision making, resilient and inclusive health workforce pipelines and community-centered health programs.

As we move forward, we are committed to learning what communities around the country say they need to create equitable systems of care and welcome their insights.