The Notah Begay III (NB3) Foundation is proud to announce new funding for Supporting Native American Health: Community-Driven Change to Foster Healthy Beverage Consumption and Advance Health Equity. Building on nearly a decade of work to improve Native youth health, this community-led initiative will support Native communities in reducing sugary drink consumption, promoting breastfeeding and increasing access to safe drinking water.
With this support, NB3 Foundation will partner with both returning and new Native-led organizations to:
- Expand use of the Community Roadmap for Healthy Beverages, an interactive guide to help Native communities reduce sugary drink consumption and promote healthy hydration through policy and systems change.
- Fund grassroots projects that improve local beverage options.
- Provide training, resources and evaluation tools rooted in Indigenous knowledge.
As part of this effort, the NB3 Foundation will launch the Water First! Learning Community mini grants to support previous grantees in continuing their hydration work and contributing insights that will guide future efforts. Alongside this, a new group of organizations will receive support to use NB3 Foundation’s Healthy Beverage Roadmap and apply lessons learned from past grantees to develop healthy beverage strategies tailored to their communities. By tracking outcomes and evaluating each community’s approach, this project looks to demonstrate how these tools can be successfully adapted and applied by communities nationwide.
“This work is about more than hydration. It’s about reclaiming health from within our communities and ensuring that solutions are led by those who are most impacted,” said Renee Goldtooth-Halwood, director of evaluation and research at NB3 Foundation.
This award is funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which is working toward a future where health is for everyone. For the past 20 years, RWJF has been a national leader in addressing childhood obesity and health inequities and has built on its approach to address the many social, economic, and physical factors that contribute to obesity, including the long-standing structural racism that exists across the systems that shape our lives. We are one of nine projects funded as part of RWJF’s final investment into childhood obesity prevention. Collectively, this final round of grants will work to improve the systems and policies that contribute to health inequities. These efforts focus on innovative approaches to address structural racism; fill gaps in the research on racism within the food system and its impact on communities of color; and engage with communities most impacted by childhood obesity and nutrition insecurity.
“It is a great honor to partner with NB3 Foundation on this critical work to help every child and family thrive in the places they call home,” said Jamie Bussel, senior program officer, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. “All children, all families, all people—no matter where they live—deserve to live in places that support their health and wellbeing and that includes access to affordable, healthy food. As decisionmakers debate massive changes to our food policies, it’s clear that efforts like these are more important than ever.”
This initiative marks a key step in advancing Native-led public health solutions and building long-term community health.
