There is increasing recognition that preventing disease and creating healthy neighborhoods requires changes in both the food environment - including how food is grown, processed, distributed, and sold - and the physical environment - from how neighborhoods are built to the transportation systems that serve them. Health and place are inextricably linked.

The Healthy Eating Active Living Convergence Partnership is a collaboration of funders who have come together with the shared goal of changing policies and environments to achieve the vision of healthy people living in healthy places. PolicyLink serves as the program director for the Convergence Partnership, which aims to strengthen collaboration between practitioners, policymakers, funders, and advocates.

The Convergence Partnership has created a series of documents, briefs, and toolkits that offers a comprehensive review of policy, strategy, and program recommendations to create healthy eating and active living environments. Some of these include:

• Promising Strategies for Creating Healthy Eating and Active Living Environments reviews policies, strategies, and program recommendations for accomplishing the goal of healthy people in healthy places. This publication results from extensive research and interviews with diverse stakeholders and constituencies and provides a menu of options for various audiences to advance or expand environmental change and policy strategies.
  
•  Strategies for Enhancing the Built Environment to Support Healthy Eating and Active Living aims to identify the best approaches for achieving its goal of healthy people in healthy places.
  
•  Transportation and Health Toolkit provides health advocates with a better understanding of transportation policies and their health implications while informing transportation advocates of the importance of health in their work. The toolkit includes presentations from leading experts, data on transportations impact on health, local case studies, policy recommendations, and advocacy opportunities.
  
• Making the Case and Getting Underway: A Funder Toolkit to Support Healthy People in Healthy Places is designed to assist foundation staff in gaining a deeper understanding of the importance of creating exciting new partnerships and grantmaking efforts that result in improved health outcomes in communities.
  

Read more at the Convergence Partnership website.