For nearly 16 years, Public Health Law & Policy (PHLP) has helped strengthen public health across the country. We work with communities as they create laws and policies that make the healthy choice the easy choice. Our work has powerful, long-term effects–with our assistance, communities lessen and prevent chronic illnesses at a broad scale, saving health care costs and creating a better quality of life. We want to reach those most in need. We know hundreds of communities want to implement our strategies, tools, and products. Cy pres funding can widen our reach as we work to stem the chronic disease epidemic plaguing America.

Our work helps the people who need it most.

• In Chicago, we helped the Parks & Rec Department develop contracts that put healthy food and beverages in their vending machines. Now, Chicago’s more than 750,000 children and teenagers have a better shot at fighting the childhood obesity epidemic.
• In California, we drafted “plug and play” model ordinances limiting where people can smoke. The result of policies like these: tobacco-related disease rates in California are 40 percent lower than the rest of the country, and more than one million lives and $86 million in health care costs were saved over the past 15 years.
• We provided model language to an Oklahoma city that became the first in the state to pass a “Complete Streets” resolution making its roads safer for all modes of transportation, especially walking and biking.
• The District of Columbia launched its Overweight and Obesity Action Plan this past year to address the fact that 55 percent of adults and 35 percent of youth ages 10-17 are overweight and obese. We facilitated a workshop for local government officials on developing joint-use agreements to open up school grounds for community recreational use, and we partnered with the police department on a planning session regarding safe places to play.

Our work gets results.

• We work in poor and underserved areas where it’s harder to find healthy and affordable food, and we help these communities develop lasting legal solutions that lower the rates of diabetes, heart disease, and obesity.
• Our work changes communities’ infrastructures and affects the root causes of chronic disease. We work toward permanent solutions with decades worth of benefit.
• We learn as we go. When we work with communities to implement new policy strategies, we integrate those findings into future solutions.

We hope you’ll consider us as a recipient of cy pres funding. Read more about our programs or call 510-302-3380 to learn more about our services and to see how our products benefit children and adults who want to live in healthier communities.