Healthy People, Healthy Carolinas (HPHC), launched in 2015 with support from The Duke Endowment, is a bold, community-based approach to addressing chronic health conditions including obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. The HPHC initiative involves local coalitions working together to initiate evidence-based interventions and systems-level policy change to improve their community’s health. HPHC recognizes that health and wellbeing are created and sustained through individual and clinical efforts, paired with the cooperation and support of the extended local community.
HPHC currently consists of 20 multi-sector, community-based coalitions working with 29 counties across North and South Carolina. Coalitions involve leaders from a wide spectrum of community organizations – healthcare, public health, social services, government, education, and business – to engage residents in improving their health. The HPHC approach is rooted in communities working together to address long term systemic conditions that have led to poor health outcomes through the implementation of evidence-based interventions, and then sustaining those efforts for long-term impact through policy, systems and environmental changes. CaroNova’s state implementation assistance teams provide data-informed technical assistance and one-on-one coaching to build coalition capacity and offer peer-to-peer and collaborative learning opportunities to spur innovation across coalitions. Additionally, as a trusted resources for community health, HPHC coalitions were instrumental in pandemic relief efforts throughout 2020 and 2021, including the coordination of vaccine distribution and emergency food access for children and families.
Since its inception in 2015, HPHC coalitions have implemented 160 interventions impacting an estimated 1.8 million residents within the 29 counties served. HPHC is growing, with three new coalitions being introduced in North Carolina in 2022.
