Boston Children's Community Mission | Children’s Health Equity (CHEq) Initiative

The Children’s Health Equity (CHEq) Initiative, a part of Boston Children’s Collaboration for Community Health, works to advance child health through place-based collective impact approaches. The CHEq Initiative supports collaborative projects within specific Boston communities to improve the health and well-being of children and families. The selected projects will foster new and long-lasting systems that promote and strengthen neighborhood cohesion.

This initiative has three phases:

• One-year planning grants were awarded to six neighborhood or geography-based, cross-sector collaboratives to plan projects with the potential to reduce inequities in children’s health and well-being.
• Following the planning period, implementation grants were awarded to four cross-sector collaboratives that demonstrate evidence of having strong implementation plans.
• We are now in the third phase of this initiative. A second round of three-year implementation grants were awarded to the same four collaboratives to continue and build upon their previous work.

Boston Children’s has continued to support the below four projects for phase three implementation grants. Each will implement their project to help improve the lives of children and families in their neighborhood. Initiatives will address either 1) child and family health and well-being or 2) community, family, and child resilience.

Learn about these coalitions and their work.

This investment will improve child health by increasing neighborhood leadership to prioritize actions that further information and education between community members and policy makers, provide civic engagement and leadership opportunities for youth and residents including the continuation of a Youth Council to develop community initiatives based on participatory budgeting, promote and achieve long-term investment for Town Field as a safe and welcoming spot to share resources, recreation, and preserve green space, and coordinate and facilitate access to programs and resources that mitigate health disparities and improve health equity.

• Population: children, youth, and families in Fields Corner, Dorchester
• Backbone organizations: Vietnamese American Initiative for Development Inc. and Dot House Health

This investment will support residents in Jackson Square to advocate for neighborhood safety through increased resident leadership from youth and parents/caregivers as well as adults, offer quality free of cost early education programs for up to 500 children ages 0-5 to prepare them for life, and provide financial and career stability for up to 300 adults to be able to provide to their families.

• Population: parents and caregivers, children ages birth to 5, youth in Jackson Square, Jamaica Plain
  • Backbone organizations: Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Development Corp., Jamaica Plain Tree of Life, and Hyde Square Task Force

This investment will improve child health by creating a career pathway to high-demand STEM careers through engaging and culturally relevant education programs, build out the healthcare and biotech strands in the Health & Life Sciences pathway at the Dearborn STEM Academy to equip students with skills and training, and engage with employers to create pathways from adult workforce readiness programs directly into training programs and careers with family-sustaining wages.

• Population: youth and adults in the Dudley neighborhood of Roxbury and North Dorchester
• Backbone organization: Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative
   

This investment will improve child health outcomes by providing local schools with any array of quality resources, continuous parent and teacher engagement, and enhanced partnership with the school district, leading to greater distribution of services and improvements at local schools.

• Population: school-age children and their parents in the Roxbury and Dorchester neighborhood bounded by Blue Hill Avenue and Washington, Dudley, Warren, and Seaver streets
• Backbone organization: Boston’s Higher Ground