HEALTHY TOGETHER was begun in January, 2007 as an initiative of the Patel Foundation for Global Understanding, and rapidly gained momentum among many community sectors eager to find more effective ways to create systemic change in regional wellness.

For the previous decade, Florida’s health, including Tampa Bay, was ranked among the lowest in America (varying between 41^st and 43^rd, depending on the metrics) and the determinants for our future outcomes were declining. Click Here, to learn more about Florida’s Health Rankings.

*America’s Health Rankings Survey, 2007, United Health Foundation. Florida’s poor ranking was based on a wide variety of metrics as diverse as high infectious disease rates, low high school graduation, obesity, addictions, chronic disease and much more. Click to view the results

Building a coalition of partners isn’t easy, especially since no one seemed to know how we would be organized or sustained. Nonetheless, leaders arose, and in our first year, Healthy Together conceived and funded the following activities:

• We put smoking cessation back on our community’s radar in an effort to provide compassionate, effective solutions for almost a quarter of our citizens who are addicted to tobacco. As a result, two major public facilities are moving to smoke free public spaces, and the first hospital in our area has adopted a smoke free work campus.

• We began a community garden project and nutrition education in a poor, under-served neighborhood where fast food is the norm. Early successes have led to the expansion of the project for 2008 to include three schools and 2,000+ students.

• We organized insurance providers, business leaders and healthcare providers to improve health through workplace wellness programs. By accumulating aggregated base line data for 50,000+ employees, employers are now able to begin measuring the positive effects wellness has on the bottom line.

• We worked with several of our partners to attract more than $500,000 of wellness funding to our region.

• We hosted the Healthy Hero Awards which celebrated eight programs of local wellness excellence and honored Dr. Paul Farmer for his community health work in Haiti, S. America and Africa.

  By the end of 2007, the Healthy Together Management Committee and the Patel Foundation agreed that it was time for the fledgling organization to become independent. Having incubated a successful initiative, the Patel Foundation assisted the new Healthy Together Board of Directors through a transition to its own offices and through the 501(c)(3) process.