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Project Health Colorado

Overview

Through a combination of communications, advocacy, leadership, media and network-building efforts over three years, Project Health Colorado helped to increase awareness, understanding and support for making health care and health coverage work better for every Coloradan. This effort to build public will for improved access to health was an innovative blend of grassroots strategies and an overarching communications campaign.

A diverse coalition of grantee partners, with support from The Trust, were engaged in a variety of community-focused grassroots efforts that aimed to engage more individuals and organizations in a statewide discussion about health care and how it can be improved. Additional support for grantee partners was provided by the Colorado Health Foundation.

Examples of grantee partner projects included storytelling to engage people and create interest and action in community health care needs; a leadership program to further engage doctors and other health professionals as advocates in health care discussions; grassroots outreach efforts to help parents get more involved in children’s health care issues; neighborhood volunteers mobilizing community members to become health care champions; and community forums to ensure that Coloradans were being heard when it comes to health care.

To amplify and support these grassroots efforts, Project Health Colorado included a statewide media and mobilization campaign that encouraged and helped people to ask questions, get answers, share solutions and support health coverage and care that works for every Coloradan. This unique, statewide campaign included an interactive website, targeted advertising, community outreach and social media. Together with the grassroots work of our grantee partners, Project Health Colorado helped to increase awareness, understanding and support to achieve access to health for all Coloradans.

A Better Future for Colorado's Communities

Evaluation Findings

Spark Policy Institute conducted an independent evaluation of the Project Health Colorado strategy in order to best understand the progress and results. The evaluation assessed what overarching changes occurred as a result of Project Health Colorado grantee efforts and the mobilization campaign; analyzed the progress The Trust and its partners made in building public will to achieve access to health in Colorado; and captured lessons learned. The full evaluation report, which includes an executive summary, was released in April 2015 along with a separate report, From Paper to Practice: Key Lessons for Foundations Deploying Complex Strategies. Additionally, The Trust and Spark Policy Institute published several issues briefs on specific topics pertaining to Project Health Colorado learnings.

Learn about the health equity issues affecting Coloradans at Collective Colorado, a publication of The Colorado Trust.