Healthy Savannah

Healthy Savannah endeavors to build a culture of health in chatham county, Georgia. Our goal is to break down the barriers that exacerbate the health disparities that affect vulnerable populations in Savannah. We seek to amplify the voices of our community. We envision a society in which everyone has equitable opportunities to live their best, healthiest life. We strive to create an environment in which the Healthy choice is the easy choice. Healthy Savannah began as an initiative founded by former Savannah mayor otis johnson in 2007 to increase access to nutritious food and promote opportunities for physical activity. In sixteen years, the initiative has since blossomed into an organization, social movement, and collaborative coalition comprised of public and private organizations, the local government, the school system, faith-based organizations, and Savannah residents. Healthy Savannah's focus on upstream solutions and implementation of policy, systems, and environmental change (pse) strategies allows us to develop sustainable interventions to positively impact the structures in which we live, learn, work, and play. While our work and policy advocacy benefits everyone, much of what we do is centered on meeting the needs of low wealth and low mobility black and brown americans. Promoting health equity is our priority. Support from grants has furthered our initiatives and enabled us to form meaningful relationships with other organizations and members of the community. The upward trajectory of engaged community leadership began with Healthy Savannah and the ymca of coastal Georgia partnering on a 'pioneering Healthy communities' grant in 2008, followed by a 'childhood obesity prevention' grant from healthcare Georgia foundation spanning 2013 to 2017, and a 'play streets' grant from the partnership for a healthier america in 2013. This work provided the foundation and led to the monumental, five-year 'racial and ethnic approaches to community health' (reach) grant from the centers for disease control and prevention in 2018 and again in 2023. Our work with the reach grant follows along three pillars: nutrition,physical activity, and breastfeeding. In 2021 and again in 2023, we received supplemental funding from the cdc to promote covid-19 and flu vaccine awareness, access, and acceptance. Ongoing funding from gulfstream aerospace supports Healthy Savannah's pse activities. A grant from center for science in the public interest in 2020 became a new resource for policy and systems change related to Healthy food access in grocery stores and supermarkets. A similar initiative in neighborhood corner stores was supported by a grant from the city of Savannah in 2022. Healthy Savannah built on the momentum of previous years in 2023. We continued our partnership with the st. joseph's/candler's health system's african american health information and resource center on regular updates of the health effective resource organizations database, or hero help me. Hero help me compiles over 1,500 free or low-cost services in over 50 categories in our community on one webpage, searchable by zip code, to connect people to critical resources they may not be aware of. The database receives hundreds of unique visitors each month. We also remained committed to seeing progress on the tide to town network via our partnership with friends of tide to town. Tide to town is a planned 30-mile protected loop of walking and biking trails connecting all of Savannah's neighborhoods. The two completed phases, the truman linear park trail and the police memorial trail, are victories for mobility and connection. More development of the network will continue in 2024 and in the coming years. We continue to work with key stakeholders dedicated to providing Healthy food in areas where residents struggle with food and nutrition insecurity. Projects such as fresh express and farm truck 912 are key to challenging low access to nutritious food in priority neighborhoods. We pride ourselves on our work, advocacy, and partnerships. We received national recognition for our health equity achievements with the lark galloway-gilliam award for advancing health equity, awarded by the cdc in 2022. We will honor this belief in our organization and remain devoted to our community as we enter our sixteenth year.