Grantee Stories

Heather Nielson moved to town in 2009 to be near her husband’s family. He’s a truck driver and he’s gone a lot. She works taking care of their three-year-old son, and lately, has thrown herself into the job of remaking Dove Creek.

Ask Avondale residents for a wish list for their community, and you may hear things that sound a lot like basic political representation and public services.

Colorado’s San Luis Valley is a place of rich agricultural landscapes between ragged peaks. It is a place with a cultural history all its own. It is also a place of intense poverty, where measures like income and life expectancy consistently lag behind other parts of the state.

The Colorado Trust took a dramatic shift in its direction in 2015, going directly to the communities most affected by these ills to ask questions rather than provide answers.

In an effort to help address the disproportionate health burdens of American Indians in Colorado, The Trust created an endowed chair at the Centers for American Indian and Alaska Native Health at the University of Colorado’s School of Public Health at Anschutz.

The 2015 John R. Moran, Jr. Grantee Leadership Awardee, Rural Resort Region Northwest Early Childhood Council.

An astounding 93 percent of Coloradans had health insurance in 2015, according to the latest count by the Colorado Health Access Survey, up from 86 percent in 2013.

Seventeen direct-service, community organizing and policy advocacy organizations came together in 2015 to serve a common vision of health equity. The cohort of organizations are part of The Trust’s Health Equity Advocacy strategy, which aims to build a strong field of advocates.

In a lecture series that was broadcast for gatherings in communities across the state, The Colorado Trust invited experts to shed light on the structures, policies and systems that marginalize vulnerable communities, and describe tactics that allow people to improve the health of their own neighborhoods and towns.

As many as 65,000 people in Colorado will continue to live with the threat of deportation—and its accompanying fear and stress—because of the Supreme Court deadlock.