Team:

• Anna Saltzman

• Jenn Garcia

• Elle Ford

Experiences from Cohort 2

Considering health from a community-centered perspective accounts for how our health depends not primarily on clinical care, but on the social, environmental, structural, and economic factors that shape our communities. In 2015, the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina Foundation (the Foundation) launched the Community-Centered Health initiative. This initiative takes a broad view of supporting health. Through fiveyear investments in multi-sector, community-based partnerships throughout North Carolina, Community-Centered Health addresses the root causes of inequitable health outcomes and has evolved during this time to include an explicit focus on racial equity. The Foundation began by supporting three grantee partnerships (referred to as Cohort 1). In 2019, it expanded the initiative to support an additional six grantee partnerships (referred to as Cohort 2). These nine funded partnerships across North Carolina engage community residents to identify prevention-focused priorities and create more equitable conditions for living healthy lives.

In early 2020, the Foundation partnered with Engage R+D to evaluate and learn from its Community-Centered Health investments. This report summarizes learnings from 2023 related to the second cohort of six partnerships. Based upon survey and interview data, it documents the evolution of the approach, partnerships’ progress toward goals, facilitators and barriers. It also includes cross-cutting insights about supporting community-centered partnerships that have relevance to others funding and implementing similar approaches.