Promoting healthy people 2010 through small grants

Abstract

The Department of Health and Human Services initiated a pilot "microgrant" or small grants program in 2001 to promote Healthy People 2010 (HP 2010) implemented by the Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center. This article describes the 103 agencies funded under this initiative and 67 control group agencies. It evaluates the HP 2010 focus areas targeted and the effectiveness of promoting HP 2010 objectives through microgrants. Forty-four percent of the grant recipients and 79% of the control group agencies indicated low levels of familiarity with HP 2010 goals. Changes in knowledge of HP 2010 goals for the microgrant group increased significantly from 5.24 +/- 3.67 to 7.83 +/- 1.86 (p < .05). The results suggest that microgrants can be a useful mechanism to plant the seeds for developing community and organizational capacity to define local health priorities, practice and test new initiatives or expand existing programs and promote knowledge about HP 2010.