As the issues of obesity and child poverty continue to grow in Grant County, the Community Foundation of Grant County is launching a new Upstream Grant Cycle.
The adult obesity rate in Grant County is at 39 percent, according to the County Health Rankings & Roadmaps publication of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF). The same publication states 27 percent of Grant County children live in poverty, the highest rate in the state.
Organizations are welcome to submit grant applications for up to $150,000 now through Dec. 15 to address either or both of the problems using “upstream” methods.
The newly designed grant was partly inspired by the famous parable from Irving Zola, who points out that helping those in need is important, but not as important as looking to the source of the issue as a whole.
In the parable, Zola writes of his fight and struggle to save a string of people who he finds drowning in a river one by one. After becoming exhausted and seeing still another person who needs saving, he realizes he has been busy saving each individual without taking time “to see who is upstream pushing them all in.”
Saving or helping an individual is one thing, but finding the source of the problem is another project entirely.
The Community Foundation hopes to look further than the immediate problems of obesity and child poverty and address the overarching issues at hand through the grant program.
Meagan Mathias, community investment manager for the Community Foundation, said she is excited to see what proposals are being brought forth in this upstream manner.
“Proposals that are upstream solutions addressing the root causes of these two systemic issues will be the focus area,” Mathias said. “Think walking/biking trails, access to affordable healthy food, education to address adult obesity. Think access to affordable childcare, transportation, education to address child poverty.”
The RWJF has researched the effects of obesity extensively and found obesity rates continuing on their current trajectory could double the number of new cases of Type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease and stroke, hypertension and arthritis by 2030.
“Although the medical cost of adult obesity in the United States is difficult to calculate, current estimates range from $147 billion to nearly $210 billion per year,” RWJF states.
The Community Foundation hopes to work off of these and other findings in order to prevent any further problems due to obesity and tackle the root causes of obesity and childhood poverty through the grant program.
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