Addressing Childhood Obesity and Health Inequities Supporting, Sustaining, and Evolving the Field

Overview

For over 20 years, RWJF has been a national leader in childhood obesity prevention efforts across the nation. As we approach the conclusion in 2025 of the Foundation’s focused commitment to preventing childhood obesity, we want to ensure that work continues in ensuring all children and families in the U.S. can thrive. Through this call for proposals (CFP), we are interested in advancing efforts that will support, sustain, and evolve the work of organizations and communities that have been at the forefront of equity-oriented childhood obesity prevention. The CFP seeks projects with the potential to support, sustain, and evolve the field by promoting systems-level change to prevent childhood obesity, address structural racism, and advance health equity.  

RWJF has been moving its childhood obesity prevention approach further upstream to focus on community conditions and the broader determinants of health. As we look ahead to 2025, we remain steadfast in our commitment to health and racial equity—and to helping ensure that the childhood obesity prevention field is strong and poised to continue to innovate and thrive.    

Purpose -- This call for proposals (CFP) is seeking projects with the potential to support, sustain, and evolve the field in promoting systems-level change to prevent childhood obesity, address structural racism, and advance health equity.

We are especially interested in projects that aim to:  

• Address structural racism and other systems that perpetuate health inequities. 
• Respond to gaps in evidence or action identified by the field.  
• Engage with communities most impacted by childhood obesity and nutrition insecurity and organizations focused on people of color. 
• Leverage and complement existing field assets (RWJF’s and others’). Within those broad goals, the four strategies below are intended to serve as suggestions, not boundaries, for potential projects.  

We encourage ideas and innovation from applicants that cut across these areas, and even go beyond them: 

1. Influence Policy and Systems Change: Work in this area may include, but is not limited to, projects that:  

• help government, communities, organizations, and coalitions advance stronger government rules, enforcement, and capacities to address structural racism and change systems that perpetuate health inequities, including the disparities in childhood obesity prevalence.     
• monitor, enforce, and support implementation of existing policies, regulations, and programs that have demonstrated positive impact on child nutrition and well-being at the local, state, and national level.  
• strengthen the impact and reach of federally funded food and nutrition programs (e.g., SNAP, WIC, School Meals).  
• help to shape and advance action that addresses the commercial determinants of health (e.g., regulations, analysis of issues and opportunities, legal strategies).  fill gaps in data, knowledge, and analysis that lawmakers, regulators, advocates, clinicians, and community leaders need for advocacy, enforcement, activism, policymaking, and systems transformation. 

2. Produce and Disseminate Actionable Evidence and Data: Work in this area can help, but is not limited to, projects that:   

• ensure ongoing access to and continued development of research, data, and surveillance at the intersection of childhood obesity and health and racial equity.  
• generate qualitative and quantitative evidence and information for decisionmakers.   fill gaps in the research and data on racism within the food system and its impact on communities of color.  

3. Catalyze Investment in Communities: Work in this area can help, but is not limited to, projects that: 

• center historically marginalized communities, create economic opportunities, and build community assets and power via community-anchored food projects.  
• build and strengthen infrastructure that supports equitable community conditions as they relate to child health and obesity prevention. 

4. Change Narratives: Work in this area will elevate community voices and help to shift public narratives away from those that create harm to those that foster belonging, health equity, and shared solutions, including projects that:   

• continue to move the popular narrative on childhood obesity away from a narrative of personal responsibility and toward a systems narrative.  
• ensure state, local, and regional policymakers, and others who build, govern, and finance communities understand the connection between place, race, and health and, in this case, its connection to food ecosystems, with the ultimate goal of encouraging community decisionmakers to rethink the way they design, plan, and implement food systems. 

Phase 2: Grant Opportunities

Applicants will be asked to identify if they are focusing on one of the above strategies outlined, understanding that projects may relate to more than one strategy, or present an entirely different focus. If selected to move forward to Phase 2, the applicant(s) will have the opportunity to indicate which type of grant funding they believe would best support their idea, including but not limited to the different types of grants described below: 

• Project grant: Grant to support specific project or activities; grantee must use funds as designated in the budget.  
• Flexible funding: funding to support a particular goal or project but grantee has discretion to allocate funding within those parameters.  
• General operating support: flexible, unrestrictive funding to support core activities and organizational capacity of 501(c)(3) organizations.   
• Endowment grant: funding invested by the grantee to provide a permanent stream of income for continued support of the organization or for a designated purpose and time.   
• Project grant rule grant: funding to a project that includes lobbying where RWJF is not the sole project funder.

All applicants must submit Phase 1 Concept Papers (due June 27, 2024, at 3:00 p.m. ET) 

All proposals for this solicitation must be submitted via the RWJF online system.

There are two phases in the competitive proposal process. The first phase requires submission of a brief concept paper through the RWJF online application system (myrwjf.org). In the second phase, we will invite selected Phase 1 applicants to submit full proposals.  

Types of Awards: Awards funded under this opportunity will be structured as one-time awards that can take various formats (project grant; general operating support; endowment; and others), determined collaboratively with RWJF and the prospective grantee/institution. 

Amount of Award: Each award will be a minimum of $1,000,000. Applicants should request the amount of funding they will need to complete the proposed project.  

Award Duration: Funding will be awarded for projects that can be 12 months to 48 months in duration.