Interfaith Neighbors

Building Healthier More Equitable Communities

The Building Healthier, More Equitable Communities (BHEC) initiative aims to address the social determinants of health through changes to the built environment and the community investment system in selected New Jersey cities, including support for efforts around equitable recovery from the COVID-19 health and economic crisis.

In the spring of 2020, Interfaith Neighbors invited partners in our work in Asbury Park to join us as a multi-sector (non-profit, corporate, governmental) team in an application to participate in the Reinvestment Fund’s Building Healthier, More Equitable Communities Initiative (BHEC). In December 2020, the Asbury Park team, with Interfaith Neighbors as the lead agency, was one of our city teams that were selected to participate in the three-year program. This program is funded by Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The three other New Jersey cities with multi-sector teams that are part of the program are Paterson, Camden and Newark.

The Building Healthier, More Equitable Communities (BHEC) initiative aims to address the social determinants of health through changes to the built environment and the community investment system in selected New Jersey cities, including support for efforts around equitable recovery from the current health and economic crisis.

BHEC Initiative Goals

  • Identify shared priorities among cities’ cross-sector collaboratives for recovery with a focus on built environment challenges.
  • Deepen cities’ understanding of the relationship between the social determinants of health, equity, and community development.
  • Strengthen cross-sector partnerships and facilitate resident engagement.
  • Make sustained actions to improve the systems, such as policies, practices, resource flows, and incentives that facilitate investment in projects and programs that accelerate equitable recovery from health and economic crises, as well as facilitate state, local, philanthropic, and private resource alignment around community priorities.
  • Improve cities’ capacity to identify and leverage streams of capital and to finance investments that promote well-being and equity through built environment projects.

BHEC Initiative Priorities

Food security is one of the main priorities of all four cities engaged in the BHEC initiative. The City of Asbury Park has been labeled a food desert, meaning many residents do not have access to fresh, healthy, affordable foods. As a result of our work with the BHEC initiative, Interfaith Neighbors has launched a new program – The Community Food Connection, which connects Asbury Park area food pantries and other community spaces into a coalition and also provides fresh, locally grown produce to these local pantries on a weekly basis during the local growing season.

In addition to this work, BHEC has collaborated with Asbury Park-based Fresh Markets, to kick off another new initiative, SNAP with Asbury Fresh. Beginning 2022, community members are able to utilize their SNAP benefits (Food Stamps) at the Asbury Fresh Kennedy Park farmers’ market to purchase farm-fresh produce, meat, eggs, certain baked goods and value-added produce (sauerkraut, pickles, etc). In addition, SNAP benefits are doubled, thanks to the NJ Good Food Buck Program. This public, private, nonprofit collaboration is the first of its kind in Monmouth County, but we hope to see more in the coming years.

Access to affordable housing and to free early childhood education is also of great importance to all cities involved in the BHEC Initiative. Interfaith Neighbors has aligned with some of our BHEC collaborative parnters (New Jersey Natural Gas, Asbury Park Housing Authority, and Coastal Habitat of Monmouth County) to form an affordable housing think tank. Our purpose is to study any local or state regulations that create barriers to access affordable housing in Asbury Park and work together for change.

Other BHEC initiatives include:

Guests at the Friendsgiving Dinner at Kula Farm.
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