Rutgers University has announced a four-year, $10 million grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to launch an initiative aimed at improving the health and quality of life in economically disadvantaged communities.

The Rutgers Equity Alliance for Community Health (REACH) program will bring together community-based organizations and university researchers, teachers, and students to find ways to improve health outcomes by focusing on social determinants of health in communities facing food insecurity, high unemployment, low high school graduation rates, and shrinking household incomes. To that end, REACH will provide community impact grants and research seed grants to Rutgers faculty and staff to partner with local organizations to achieve health equity by addressing structural and systemic racism affecting issues in housing, food insecurity, education, and employment.

REACH is part of a university-wide initiative to coordinate efforts across its campuses and medical and health professional schools to address health inequities. Over the last six months, the university has received nearly $20 million from RWJF.

“This is not just another health research project. One of our university diversity priorities was to define sustainable and substantive community engagement that leverages our educational mission. REACH is a mechanism to do that to partner with communities to solve critical problems collaboratively,” said Enobong (Anna) Branch, senior vice president for equity and professor of sociology at Rutgers-New Brunswick, who will co-lead the alliance with Denise Rodgers, a family physician and vice chancellor for interprofessional programs at Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences. “Translating our research with an eye toward impact for the public good. Together with our community partners we can enact systemic change.”

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