• Level I ($25,000 and under) – Due April 12, 2011
• Level II ($25,001 - $150,000) – Due August 2, 2011

• Level I ($25,000 and under) – Due April 12, 2011
• Level II ($25,001 - $150,000) – Due August 2, 2011

The Wellmark Foundation’s funding efforts focus on improving the health of Iowa and South Dakota communities through prevention. Specifically, our funding seeks to facilitate programs targeting:

• Childhood obesity prevention
• Community-based wellness and prevention

The overarching opportunity this funding offers is to create and resource healthy community demonstrations to evaluate the effects of a full complement of health-promoting policies and programs.

The following represent the types of projects we seek to support in the areas of childhood obesity prevention and community-based wellness and prevention. This is not an exhaustive list and is meant to stimulate community thinking and planning around what might be possible in your setting:

• Enhance efforts to ensure that all children have high-quality early developmental support (child care, education, and other services).
• Support strategies to enhance WIC and SNAP (Food Stamps) programs and/or to meet the food security needs of the hungry with nutritious foods.
• Support public-private collaborations to create access to healthy foods and increased physical activity in communities.
• Increase the availability and affordability of nutritious foods in new and existing grocery stores, neighborhood farmers' markets and community gardens.
• Enhance efforts to offer children only healthy foods in schools, school environments, and school-based events.
• Realize and advance the concept of schools (K-12) including time for all children to be physically active every day and/or effectively integrating health literacy strategies into the overall education curriculum/experience.
• Achieve and advance smoke-free state status. Minimize primary or secondary tobacco exposure and alcohol or other drug use through targeted education and outreach efforts around risky behaviors.
• Promote walking and biking to school by securing safe routes.
• Move towards the reality of communities improving availability of mechanisms for producing, distributing, and purchasing foods from farms and local sources.
• Advance community efforts that provide all with access to accurate, actionable health information and support life-long learning and the skills to promote good health.
• Realize efforts communities could implement to increase knowledge and support for breastfeeding.
• Enhance community efforts around built environment to increase the infrastructure to support walking and bicycling in neighborhoods and communities of all kinds.
• Resource efforts to foster community coalitions or collaborations to improve nutrition habits and advance vigorous and regular physical activity.
• Develop media campaigns, utilizing multiple channels (print, radio, web, television, social networking, and other methods) to promote healthy eating and active living (energy balance) using consistent messages.
• Improve and implement school wellness policies that provide opportunities for young people to improve (and lead) interpersonal skills (e.g., problem-solving, conflict resolution, self-control, communication, negotiation, etc.).
• Improve the physical environment of a community that includes better access to healthful foods, opportunities for physical activity, and other health-promoting opportunities.

Prevention is the global theme of the Foundation’s funding agenda. The Spectrum of Prevention outlined below is a systematic tool that promotes a multifaceted range of activities for effective prevention.

These project level definitions highlight that prevention goes beyond education and the individual. As you consider potential proposals, think about these distinctions. Grant support could take the form of planning grants, community-based program implementation, organizational capacity building, health policy advancement, or a combination of these.

The Spectrum of Prevention is a Prevention Institute tool originally developed by Larry Cohen in 1983 while working as director of Prevention Programs at the Contra Costa California County Health Department. It is based upon the work of Dr. Marshall Swift in preventing developmental disabilities. More information is available at the Prevention Institute.