Missouri Communities Move to Action to Improve Health

Working together is at the heart of making meaningful change in a community. Building Communities for Better Health (BCBH)—a three-year grant-funded program sponsored through the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services—kicked off in 2018 with the goal of empowering communities to implement key policy, systems, and environmental change approaches. The program focuses on reducing risk around three factors—physical inactivity, poor nutrition, and tobacco use and exposure—that contribute most significantly to chronic diseases, the leading cause of death in Missouri.

The program’s 17 selected local grantees, all of whom represent rural communities, are tasked with putting together their own chronic disease prevention action plans.

This June, BCBH held a two-day training session for their grantees’ public health workers, during which County Health Rankings & Roadmaps Action Learning Coaches shared resources to help guide them on their journey to better health. These resources included evidence-informed strategies from What Works for Health; the 27-9-3 “elevator” pitch, to effectively communicate their action plans to draw in new, potential stakeholders; and the Intervention Planning Matrix, which spotlights approaches to address health disparities.

The training also fostered and strengthened partnerships among the grantees, as they grew to see each other as fellow collaborators, and not merely as residents of a different county. Solidified as a team addressing similar, complex issues, they were instilled with a sense of hope around the potential for sustainable, positive change within their own communities.

Are you interested in helping your community move with data to action? Check out the County Health Rankings & Roadmaps Action Center.