Community Transformation Grant Awards Announced

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has announced grant awards of $103 million to 61 states and communities through the Community Transformation Grants (CTG). Created by the Affordable Care Act, the CTG program provides an opportunity for communities to support intensive approaches to reduce risk factors responsible for the leading causes of death and disability in the nation such as diabetes and heart disease. The purpose of the initiative is to create healthier communities by focusing on capacity building and implementation of broad, evidence-based and practice-based policy, environmental, programmatic, and infrastructure changes in five strategic areas: Tobacco Free Living, Active Living and Healthy Eating, High Impact Quality Clinical and Other Preventive Services, Social and Emotional Wellness and Healthy and Safe Physical Environment. Grantees will also focus on achieving health equity and reducing health disparities; successful applicants had to identify population subgroups experiencing health disparities and identify specific outcomes to narrow the gaps.

Thirty-five grantees received implementation grants ranging from $500,000 to $10 million and 26 grantees received capacity Building grants ranging from $147,000 to $500,000. Awards went to grantees in 36 states, including seven tribal organizations and one territory. Grants are expected to run for five years. A full list of the funded states and communities can be found here.

In addition, HHS announced earlier this month $4.2 million in funding awards to seven national networks of community-based organizations. As part of the National Dissemination and Support Initiative of the Community Transformation Grants (CTG) program, these networks are to engage community members in identifying solutions to improve health with effective community-based prevention strategies that can be modeled in multiple locations. This funding was divided into two categories, dissemination and acceleration. Dissemination grantees will support, disseminate and amplify the evidence-based strategies of the CTG program nationally. Four dissemination awards went to the American Public Health Association; the Asian Pacific Partners for Empowerment, Advocacy and Leadership; the Community Anti-Drug Coalition; and the National Farm to School Network at Occidental College. Acceleration awards are intended to help spread CTG work across the country and in particular to help reach rural areas and areas with health disparities. Three acceleration awards went to the American Lung Association, the National REACH Coalition and the YMCA of the USA.

For more information, see the CDC's CTG page.