The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has announced the availability of an estimated $900 million in funding for Community Transformation Grants.

Created by the Affordable Care Act, the purpose of this program is to create healthier communities. These grants are aimed at helping communities implement projects proven to reduce chronic diseases – such as diabetes and heart disease.

By promoting healthy lifestyles and communities, especially among population groups experiencing the greatest burden of chronic disease, these grants will help improve health, reduce health disparities, and lower health care costs.

Consistent with the law, these grants will focus on five priority areas by building capacity to implement broad evidence and practice-based policy, environmental, programmatic and infrastructure changes, as appropriate, in large counties, and in states, tribes and territories, including rural and frontier areas.

The grants will further support implementation of such interventions in five strategic areas aligning with Healthy People 2020 focus was and achieving demonstrated progress in the following five performance measures outlined in the Affordable Care Act:

• Changes in weight
  
• Changes in proper nutrition
  
• Changes in physical activity
  
• Changes in tobacco use prevalence
  
• Change in emotional well being and overall mental health, as well as other program-specific measures.
  

The specific amount of funding per community will be determined by proposed activities, population size, burden of disease, ability to reduce health disparities, quality of application, and likelihood of success. Eligible entities that can apply for the Community Transformation Grants are: state and local governments; state and local nonprofit organizations; federally-recognized American Indian Tribes and Alaska Native Villages; Tribal organizations; Urban Indian Health Programs, and Tribal, and Inter-tribal consort. Eligible organization details are described in the Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA).

The official funding announcement for the Community Transformation Grants can be found online by searching for CDFA 93.544.