Convergence Partnership

In 2010, the Northwest Health Foundation launched the Convergence Partnership Fund, a new grant program designed to improve opportunities for healthy eating and active living in communities of color and low-income neighborhoods in Multnomah County.

In September 2010, the Foundation awarded seven grants to fund collaborative efforts to improve built environments and access to healthy foods.  These grants support community-driven initiatives to shape the public policies that affect opportunities for health within communities that have been most affected by obesity-related health disparities.  Funded projects employ policy and environmental change strategies to improve built environments and access to healthy foods.  You can read a summary of these grants in the press release located within the “Events / News / Resources” tab of this section of our web site. 

The Convergence Partnership Fund represents a collaboration of funders that included the national Healthy Eating, Active Living (HEAL) Convergence Partnership along with local matching funding from the Meyer Memorial Trust, Kaiser Permanente Northwest, the Bullitt Foundation, CareOregon, the Oregon Community Foundation, United Way of the Columbia-Willamette, and the Northwest Health Foundation.

The fund strives to achieve the vision of healthy people in healthy places by contributing to the development of a better resourced, more effective, and better networked cohort of advocacy organizations representing communities of color.