Your Idea. Your Neighborhood. Your Health.
Often, the best ideas for improving health in a community come from those who live and work there. Dell Medical School’s Community-Driven Initiatives supports these.
By leveraging the resources of The University of Texas at Austin and the surrounding community, leaders of projects identified by Community-Driven Initiatives’ periodic Call for Ideas work with the team to develop plans for implementation, evaluation and sustainability, moving ideas from concept to reality.
The Call for Ideas is a partnership opportunity with Dell Med; a way to pilot projects for, by and about the community; and an opportunity to turn an idea into a plan. If the plan is successful, the project will launch in six months to a year.
Every idea submitted receives feedback from a Community Strategy Team and a dedicated project development team. A handful of ideas from each cycle receive robust support.
Next Cycle
Information on the next Call for Ideas submission period will be added as it is available. To get notified of the next cycle, email the team below.
Project Examples
Two organizations formed a collaboration to bring affordable, nutritious foods to the rural areas of Bastrop County that need it the most. Bastrop County Cares — a countywide partnership of public, private, faith-based and nonprofit organizations — and Farmshare Austin — whose mobile markets promote access to healthy, sustainably grown foods — were both selected as Call for Ideas finalists.
Community Coalition for Health operates as a relationship broker between African American communities and health care organizations. Community-Driven Initiatives and the coalition worked together to solidify its mission and formalize its role as a faith-based organization that addresses health disparities in African American communities.
The Alliance for African American Health in Central Texas aims to positively impact health through fostering economic stability, nutritious eating, effective food policies and positive social networks by creating intergenerational gardening teams: young people, adult lead gardeners and older people who plant and maintain backyard gardens. Younger people will take financial literacy and food justice classes, teams will develop and share gardening skills and the harvest will create access to healthy, nutritious foods.
Go! Austin/Vamos! Austin is partnering with the Austin Police Department’s Police Activities League to create opportunities for youth to participate in organized soccer leagues in far east and southeast Travis County — areas with historically low investment in park programming and green spaces. This project increased soccer league enrollment and used a mobile soccer field to activate spaces for physical activity.