The Institute for Healthcare Improvement has announced the twenty-four communities that will receive grants to accelerate efforts to improve the health of their populations.

Made possible by a $4.8 million grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and led by IHI, the twenty-four awardees will funding through the Spreading Community Accelerators through Learning and Evaluation (SCALE) initiative to improve the health of their communities and spread effective community-driven approaches to better health across the country. To that end, IHI will partner with Community Solutions, Communities Joined in Action, and the Collaborative Health Network to help the awardees assess their current needs, build a set of community-health metrics, and attend a Community Health Improvement Academy designed to strengthen stakeholder capabilities in leadership, change management, and improvement practice. Community coalitions will work on issues such as increasing access to healthier food, reducing substance abuse in the community, and working to improve the health literacy of more people in the community.

Over the next two years, SCALE match the four awardees tapped as "mentor" communities — thanks to their track record of achieving better health — with twenty so-called pacesetter communities that are seeking to accelerate their rate of change. SCALE is the first community-based phase of IHI's 100 Million Healthier Lives initiative, which aims to help a hundred million people live healthier lives by 2020. To date, more than five hundred patient advocates, community leaders, and implementers across the domains of public health, community health, healthcare policy, academia, and business have signed on to the initiative.

"Now, we look forward to bringing the awardees together to deepen their ability to create effective improvement and to generously share what’s currently working in various locales," said Soma Stout, IHI's executive external lead for health improvement. "Communities don't need to start from scratch to reduce homelessness, ease poverty, or fill neighborhoods with healthier food options. Effective interventions already exist that can be more widely adapted — and that process happens naturally when communities start to engage with one another. The awardees all have in common a readiness and eagerness to learn from each other."

For a complete list of the participating communities, visit the RWJF website.