Deadline: 09-Jun-21
The NYS Health Foundation is seeking applications for its “Advancing Healthy Food, Healthy Lives” program with the mission to improve the health of all New Yorkers, especially the most vulnerable.
The link between food and health is clear. Nutritious food can act as medicine, helping to prevent and manage disease. But too much food, too little food, food that is not nutritious, or food that is not culturally appropriate can have serious health consequences.
NYS Health’s “Advancing Healthy Food, Healthy Lives” Request for Proposals (RFP) aims to support a more robust, diverse food system that promotes health and equity throughout New York State.
Healthy Food, Healthy Lives works at the intersection of health and food to improve access to healthy and affordable foods, reduce food insecurity, and promote equity. NYS Health aims to leverage existing and new opportunities in the food systems arena to foster the adoption of promising policies and to scale local and regional best practices.
Priority Areas
NYSHealth’s Healthy Food, Healthy Lives priority area, launched in 2021, seeks to advance policies and programs that connect New Yorkers with the food they need to thrive through two strategies:
- Enabling policies that promote healthy and affordable food
- Supporting the sound implementation of federal food policy at the State and local levels;
- Leading planning and implementation of local and regional food plans;
- Making nutrition incentive programs (e.g., Health Bucks, Double Up Food Bucks) more widely available;
- Reducing barriers to and streamlining enrollment and participation in SNAP and WIC;
- Improving procurement policies for large institutions to support the purchasing of high-quality, culturally appropriate, and nutritious foods; and
- Producing actionable data analyses that support policy changes to spur program expansion and replication, such as online SNAP purchasing.
- Testing and scaling programs that connect people to healthy and affordable food
- Improving the purchasing power of food banks and pantries and the quality of food distributed;
- Replicating partnerships between health care systems and healthy food initiatives, such as produce prescription programs;
- Scaling programs that help empower communities to grow their own food;
- Building capacity of small or newly formed consortiums that address racial disparities in the food system; and
- Supporting counter-marketing programs that reduce the demand for unhealthy products.
Funding Information
- Individual project budgets will be capped at $300,000.
- Projects will range from 12–24 months.
Eligibility Criteria
- To build the capacity of New York State-based organizations to advance the field, all applicants are required to be New York State-based.
- Nonprofits, government agencies, for-profit organizations, and academic organizations are eligible to apply.
- Applicants may partner or subcontract with a non-New York-based organization if it offers resources and expertise beneficial to the project. Individuals are not eligible to apply.
- Priority for larger grants will be given to projects that are statewide or regional in scope, have system-wide implications, and build collaboration among organizations.
- NYSHealth will also award smaller grants to organizations or consortiums working at a more local level to implement projects that have the potential to be scaled or replicated.
Selection Criteria
Both past NYS Health grantees and new organizations are welcome to apply.
The most competitive proposals will align with the Advancing Healthy Food, Healthy Lives goals and strategies, with a focus on improving racial and health equity in New York’s food system.
All online inquiry forms are reviewed internally by Foundation staff, who will invite selected applicants to submit a full proposal. A panel of external experts and Foundation staff will then review full proposals.
Selection criteria will include, but not be limited to:
- The project will have a regional or statewide impact, or have the potential for replication beyond the local level;
- The project leverages federal, State, or local priorities and resources; and
- The project addresses racial and health inequities in the food system and among food-insecure New Yorkers.
For more information, visit https://nyshealthfoundation.org/rfp/advancing-healthy-food-healthy-lives/