Health & Wellbeing

Ensuring health and wellbeing for all Vermonters involves focusing on specific issue areas such as mental health and health equity while also paying close attention to the needs of specific populations, such as youth and older Vermonters.

Caring for Older Vermonters

When we support older Vermonters’ basic needs for meals, transportation, warm homes, and social connection, we also support their ability to age in place and continue to share their wisdom and experience with their community.

• Supporting seniors’ access  to medical care, including reliable transportation.
• Supporting seniors’ ability to meet their basic needs, such as food and heat; and creating opportunities for ongoing social connection and engagement.
• Ensuring older Vermonters have reliable access to information technology and are protected from online threats.

Helping Youth Thrive

Investing in the well-being of our youth sets them up for life-long success, reduces long-term healthcare costs, increases community vitality, and keeps Vermont a place for families.

• Supporting strategies that nurture essential relationships to reduce the risk of substance use, involvement in the justice system, or isolation.
• Fostering youth belonging and connection through mentor programs, teen centers, community service opportunities, and other youth-focused ‘third spaces’.
• Amplifying youth voice through youth councils, leadership opportunities, and other efforts that authentically engage.
• Improving access to preventative health care, mental health supports, and adult role models
• Helping to develop healthy social media consumption habits

Ensuring Health Equity

• Many of the systems and structures that we rely on in daily life have contributed to inequitable health outcomes. Disrupting inequities and removing barriers to healthcare is a priority.
• Collaboration with the Vermont Department of Health to distribute federal funds to community-based organizations for health equity work.
• Projects that support health care providers and community health workers addressing the unique needs of rural populations, BIPOC Vermonters, disabled people, and other marginalized groups.
• Supporting access to reproductive health care.
• Projects that address systemic inequities in health equity.

Mental Health and Wellness

The pandemic exposed gaps in our mental health care, revealing the need for stronger suicide prevention, workforce development, support for people in crisis, and reducing the stigma associated with mental health.

• Innovations in intervention, stabilization, and support for people in mental health crisis.
• Efforts to recruit, train, and retain a workforce for mental illness prevention and care.
• Projects at all levels that work to reduce the stigma associated with mental health.
• Programs, systems, and networks that specifically address suicide prevention.

Building Social Cohesion

Communities that work, play, and solve problems together have a powerful influence on individuals’ sense of belonging and well-being.

• Participatory arts initiatives and other projects that bring people together across lines of difference.
• Public arts projects that elevate and highlight themes of antiracism, equity, inclusion, and belonging.
• Place-making efforts that improve social cohesion and distribute social capital, power, and privilege widely within a community.