The Health Trust’s Healthy Living Initiative aims to reduce obesity by creating changes in our environment to increase access to physical activity and healthy food opportunities for all residents. The rising rate of obesity in this county is a growing health problem. Yet we can design better health into our daily lives by creating an environment where physical activity and nutritious food is more readily accessible, making the right thing to do also the easy thing to do.

We do this work by:

• Supporting health in city planning
• Creating Healthy Places
• Supporting and Promoting Community and School Gardens

Supporting Health in City Planning

In a world where we are increasingly surrounded by cars and fast food restaurants, it is often difficult if not impossible to lead a healthy life in our modern cities. Yet our cities can take steps to become healthier places, supporting facets like bike paths, walking trails, parks and grocery stores. By working with local cities to design these health policies into the cities’ General Plans (their blueprints for development) we make healthy living easier for our community residents. The Health Trust does this work by:

• Developing and implementing advocacy strategies for local cities currently revising their general plans.
• Implementing a media and public education campaign to raise awareness about the importance of health elements in general plans.
• Facilitating technical assistance (suggested/model language for health policies) to city planners.
• Funding organizations through our grantmaking to advocate for and/or assist cities with the inclusion of health elements in the cities’ General Plans.

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Promoting Healthy Places

Donuts and soft drinks are all too common in the places where we spend most of our time— our community organizations, our schools and even our workplaces. Few of these places and our wider neighborhoods and communities have policies that help us eat healthfully and engage in regular physical activity. It is no wonder we see rising rates of obesity and chronic illness and related rising health care costs. We work to create more healthy places by:

• Supporting and promoting best practices in organizational wellness for a variety of organizations throughout Silicon Valley.
• Funding organizations through limited grantmaking for students/school wellness related projects through a RFP process.
• Funding organizations through grantmaking to create healthier places

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Community and School Gardens

Even within one of the richest Valley’s in the country, communities lack access to healthy food and are affected by poor health outcomes and health inequity. Community and school gardens grow food, build human connections, and increase community access to healthy, affordable fresh food. Increased access to healthy food supports healthy eating which reduces obesity and overweight and its negative health consequences—diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. The Health Trust does this work by:

• Partnering with local garden and farm organizations to make school and community gardens available to communities with the least access to healthy, affordable food. We do this work primarily through Silicon Valley HealthCorps and Health Trust grantmaking.
• Conducting outreach and working with stakeholders to increase support for the role of community and school gardens and farms in increasing access to healthy food and promoting healthy eating.
• Promoting the use of our local data to better understand healthy food access, our local food system and the impact of community and school gardens on individuals, schools and neighborhoods.

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