childhood obesity and health inequities – Jun 27

Posted by Robert Wood Johnson Foundation on May 28, 2024

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation invites proposals addressing childhood obesity and health inequities

For over 20 years, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) has been a national leader in childhood obesity prevention efforts across the nation.

The foundation has issued a call for proposals addressing childhood obesity and health inequities. Through this call for proposals, the foundation will support projects with the potential to bolster, sustain, and evolve the field by promoting systems-level change to prevent childhood obesity, address structural racism, and advance health equity. The foundation is especially interested in projects that aim to address structural racism and other systems that perpetuate health inequities, respond to gaps in evidence or action identified by the field, engage with communities most impacted by childhood obesity and nutrition insecurity and organizations focused on people of color, and leverage and complement existing field assets (those of RWJF and others). Within those broad goals, the foundation encourages ideas and innovation from applicants that cut across the following four strategies, and even go beyond them: 1) influence policy and systems change; 2) produce and disseminate actionable evidence and data; 3) catalyze investment in communities; and 4) change narratives.

Funded projects may support a wide range of activities and generate outputs that include but are not limited to data, resources, enhanced surveillance systems, mapping and monitoring approaches, program implementation, advocacy and community power-building, coalition and partnerships, strengthened infrastructure for community engagement and activism, and/or storytelling. Innovative ideas and approaches and new partners in this work are welcome and encouraged.

This is a two-phase funding opportunity, through which RWJF expects to invest up to $22 million in early 2025. Each award will be a minimum of $1 million for projects 12 to 48 months in duration.

Applicants may include but are not limited to nonprofit, private sector, and government organizations; local or state-based philanthropy and intermediary/backbone organizations; academia; professional membership organizations; and community-based state, and national advocacy organizations or coalitions. Eligible applicants must have the organizational infrastructure that demonstrates sufficient capacity and history to conduct proposed efforts in a timely, well-managed way that leads to desired outcomes. Eligible applicants must be based in the United States or its territories.

Concept papers are due June 27, 2024, at 3:00 p.m. ET, and upon review selected applicants will be invited to submit a full proposal, due October 24, 2024, at 3:00 p.m. ET.

For complete program guidelines and application instructions, see the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation website.

Deadline: June 27, 2024 at 3:00 p.m. ET (Concept papers)