The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) has a vision of a Culture of Health rooted in equity where everyone has a fair and just opportunity to reach their best health and wellbeing, no matter their race, ethnicity, or social class. Economic inclusion for family wellbeing is one of RWJF’s central goals and the heartbeat of the Healthy Children and Families (HCF) theme. At RWJF, they envision a society in which all parents and caregivers are fully integrated into the economy, the barriers to wealth and prosperity are removed, and every child has an array of opportunities that helps them grow up healthy.
Evidence reveals a robust causal link between access to economic resources and opportunity for health and wellbeing. The U.S. economy and many systems that families interact with prioritize production and economic growth, excluding some people—particularly Black, Indigenous and immigrant families—from the nation’s shared prosperity based on factors such as participation in the traditional labor market. HCF’s goal is to disrupt current economic paradigms that value production over wellbeing by addressing the structural factors in economic systems, policies, and decisionmaking.
RWJF seeks efforts to bring a new social contract for children and families to life–one that acknowledges collective interdependence; the need for shared prosperity; and that all families and children have inherent value and dignity. This call for proposals will create a portfolio of grants addressing structural issues that hinder children and families from thriving in the economy. RWJF is interested in frameworks, ideas, models, or approaches that demonstrate an alternative economic vision that positions families at the center–challenging the idea that the value of families can only be understood in connection to work or production.
The focus is on systems change—shifting from programs, policies, and services that fill gaps in families’ resources to the longer-term structural and systemic changes that will ensure all families have the resources they need to raise thriving children. RWJF aims to build evidence for and to elevate promising and innovative models, their connections to current approaches, and how they might help realize a vision that prioritizes child and family health and wellbeing as a core goal of our nation and the infusion of such into the economy.
Additional information about the program can be found at https://anr.rwjf.org/viewCfp.do?cfpId=1693&cfpOverviewId=#page=2.
Estimated Total Program Funding:
