It takes a village to put kids first.

Policies are often created without kids and families in mind. Since 2008, the Healthi Kids Coalition has been blazing a path for healthier kids across the region. Our partners are residents, caregivers and child-serving organizations. We work in partnership with youth and families to craft policies and messages and advocate for change.

In collaboration, we create bold solutions that address inequities to whole child health. Our policy goals are based on evidence-based solutions. We firmly believe in the value of community evidence for developing local solutions that work for kids and families.

Our policy solutions advance child-centered decision-making. Together we believe in the value of kids – our coalition pushes decision-makers to prioritize children when making all decisions. In order to improve the health of every child, we need to put kids and families first in how we develop services, design our neighborhoods and create safe, supportive learning environments.

To ensure every child has a safe and supportive village, we must abolish inequities caused by structural racism, poverty and community violence. With that goal, we advocate for evidence-based solutions to advance whole child health that promote health equity to ensure all families and kids have what they need to thrive.

Ready with best practices, data and community evidence, we advocate for change. Healthi Kids staff provides advocacy training to youth, residents and caregivers to share how to activate voices to directly influence policy, system and environmental change at the state and local levels.

To advance our vision for every child, our staff are members of 70 community tables across the region. By partnering with existing organizations and collective impact models, we ensure our mission to put kids first infuses into other conversations across the community, and that we align our collective goals to support kids and families. To see the tables where our staff are sitting, explore the graphic below.