Louisville Awarded $7.9 Million Federal Health Grant
Mar 20th, 2010
The Louisville Metro Health Department will receive a $7.9 million grant which will go towards 23 projects to promote healthy living, such as making fresh fruits and vegetables available in low-income neighborhoods, improving bike trails, and serving healthier school lunches.
Dr. Adewale Troutman, director of the Louisville Metro Health and Wellness Department, told the Courier-Journal that the grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is designed to give people more “opportunities to be healthy and to make better choices.”
Troutman told the Courier-Journal that the $7.9million is equal to about one-third of the annual operating budget for the health department, which will administer the grant, and is a “dramatic extension” of resources available for improving health.
The Courier-Journal also reported that the 23 projects will cover a wide range of goals, including making fresh fruits and vegetables more available in neighborhoods underserved by grocery stores, improving the city's bike trails, creating mobile grocers, encouraging breastfeeding and promoting healthy eating and physical activity in schools.
The awards are part of the HHS Communities Putting Prevention to Work (CPPW) initiative, a comprehensive prevention and wellness initiative funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
“We’re looking to create the healthy community environments that will help prevent heart attacks, strokes, cancer, diabetes, and other serious health problems on a broad scale,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. “And, by preventing and controlling chronic disease, we can start to turn around rising health care costs as well,” she said.
CPPW awards to cities, towns, and tribes across the country will provide communities with the resources to create healthy choices for residents, such as increasing availability of healthy foods and beverages, improving access to safe places for physical activity, discouraging tobacco use, and encouraging smoke-free environments.
In addition to the public health benefits of the initiative, the competitively-awarded grants will also support putting Americans back to work—an essential component of winning plans. Communities will have two years to complete their programs.
Of the 44 communities receiving grants, 23 communities are receiving funding for obesity prevention; 14 communities for tobacco cessation; and seven others for both obesity and tobacco cessation efforts. The awards are being are distributed among communities of various sizes, with an average grant of $17.3 million to each large city grantee; an average of $7.7 million to urban areas; an average award of $4.7 million to small cities or rural areas, and an average award of $1.3 million to tribes.
Small city and rural awards will be administered through state departments of health in nine states, providing funds to 16 small and rural communities.
To read the Courier-Journal article on the
To view a complete listing of grant awardees, visit http://www.hhs.gov/recovery/programs/cppw/grantees.html.
To view a fact sheet on Communities Putting Prevention to Work visit http://www.hhs.gov/recovery/programs/cppw/factsheet.html
To learn more about Communities Putting Prevention to Work, visit http://www.hhs.gov/recovery and http://www.cdc.gov/chronicdisease/recovery.
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