Youth Creating a Healthier New Bedford

“Youth Creating a Healthier New Bedford”: Investing $500,000 in a Youth-Led Initiative to Promote Community Health in New Bedford

In our mission to reduce the gap in life expectancy in Eastern Massachusetts, we make large-scale, community-led, place-based investments to create the social and economic conditions for good health. As such, in southeastern Massachusetts we are committing $500,000 over two years to establish “Youth Creating a Healthier New Bedford,” a youth-led initiative that empowers young people in New Bedford to identify the social drivers impacting cardiometabolic health, engages them in developing a shared agenda for promoting community health and wellness, and supports them as emerging leaders.

We are partnering with SouthCoast Community Foundation to support and convene local organizations to align efforts for broad, sustainable support for the initiative, while helping integrate other areas such as the arts, environmental sustainability, and community development to foster long-term transformative change in the community.

In this work, we are pleased to be funding in alignment with Advancing Health Equity in Massachusetts (AHEM), the Commonwealth’s place-based initiative aimed at eliminating racial, economic and regional disparities in health outcomes.

This initiative aims to:

  • Fund a backbone structure that supports youth leadership and development.

  • Develop a shared agenda that synthesizes input from youth and their communities and defines key priorities and measurable indicators.

  • Convene local organizations to align efforts and build broader, sustainable support for the initiative.  

We will be updating this page as the program develops. Please visit again for updates and news.