Healthy Tomorrows Partnership for Children Program

The Healthy Tomorrows Partnership for Children promotes child health by encouraging communities to enhance prevention programs and to make health care for every child more accessible. Healthy Tomorrows stimulates innovative community-based programs that employ prevention strategies to promote access to health care for mothers and children.

Healthy Tomorrows began in 1989 as a collaborative grant program funded and administered by the HRSA Maternal and Child Health Bureau in partnership with the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). To date, 136 projects (with five-year project periods) have been funded annually by MCHB at $50,000. Projects in 44 States, Washington, DC and Puerto Rico gave been funded as Special Projects of Regional and National Significance (SPRANS) and Community Integrated Service Systems (CISS) under Title V of the Social Security Act.

Healthy Tomorrows grants have been awarded to a wide variety of organizations, including, but not limited to, medical centers, schools, local foundations and nonprofit agencies, community-based clinics, community health centers, hospitals, and local and State health departments.

Activities

The Healthy Tomorrows Partnership for Children Program supports the development of family-centered, community-based initiatives that:

• Plan and implement innovative and cost-effective approaches for focusing resources to promote community-defined preventive child health and developmental objectives for vulnerable children and their families, especially those with limited access to quality health services
  
• Foster/promote cooperation among community organizations, individuals, agencies, businesses, and families
  
• Involve pediatricians and other pediatric health professionals in community-based service programs
  
• Build community and statewide partnerships among professionals in health, education, social services, government, and business to achieve self-sustaining programs to assure healthy children and families

Topic areas of initiatives funded since 1989 include, but are not limited to the following:

• Teen pregnancy prevention
  
• Abstinence
  
• Child abuse/neglect among specific populations (e.g., American Indian/Alaska Native)
  
• Pediatric oral health
  
• Enhanced clinical services
  
• Homeless adolescent health care
  
• Improved access to primary care providers and enrollment in Medicaid and/or the child health insurance programs
  
• Intervention to address high-risk health behaviors in youth offenders and their siblings
  
• Case management to increase prenatal care in the first trimester of pregnancy
  
• Health education
  
• Playground safety and/or injury prevention
  
• Substance abuse
  
• Mental health
  
• Rural health
  
• Asthma
  
• School-based health

Resources

• Healthy Tomorrows Partnership for Children (American Academy of Pediatrics, not a U.S. Government Web site)
• The Healthy Tomorrows Partnership for Children Program in Review: Analysis and Findings of a Descriptive Survey, 1999
• Contact the HRSA Maternal and Child Health Bureau Division of Research, Training and Education, 301-443-2340