HISTORY
Our History Toward a Better Future
After five years of planning and collaboration with the community, the Stapleton Foundation published a master plan in 1995 for the redevelopment of the old Stapleton airport. This plan was published in partnership with Stapletonʼs Citizenʼs Advisory Board and the City and County of Denver. During that process, over 200 residents from the NW Aurora, East Montclair, Greater Park Hill, NE Park Hill, and Stapleton neighborhoods were involved in the development of the plan. The most important goals espoused by the residents in the planning process was to develop seamless connections between the new and existing neighborhoods that would provide opportunities for more jobs, improved schools, and a safer built environment for outdoor healthy living. The redevelopment of Stapleton continues, and the residents of these five neighborhoods have sustianed their dialogue which has led them to conclude that although they share several challenges, the one that is most important is the “state of the health” within their neighborhoods. This concern led to the establishment of 2040 Partners for Health in September of 2006. The Department of Family Medicine at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Center and the Stapleton Foundation for sustainable urban communities joined forces to begin a discussion with the community to see if they were interested in pursuing a long-term initiative that would improve the health of the neighbors within their community. The answer was a resounding “Yes!”
2040 Partners for Health (2040) was organized as a research and development enterprise and managed by an eleven-member Steering Committee (four members from the community, four members from the University and three at-large members). In December 2007, 2040 received Internal Revenue Service approval to incorporate as an independent 501(c)(3). Since its inception, the primary CBPR study that was organized, and continues to be supported, by 2040 is a National Institute of Health research study, entitled “Taking Neighborhood Health to Heart.” The study involved over 85 volunteers from the community, working in partnership with an academic research team from the University. The result was to establish a baseline data bank on the “state of the health” in these five neighborhoods.
2040's future puts emphasis on interventions and action . While data gathering is important, taking action to identify what programs and activities actually make a difference has the potential to create change as well as understand what created it. To do this 2040's highest priorities will be to build partnerships with existing agencies, nonprofits, policy makers, and community groups to organize joint efforts. 2040 will use CBPR to inform, suggest, and implement programs as well as develop comprehensive strategies that require multi-organizational collaboration. Currently there are nonprofits such as the Center for African American Health and the Stapleton Foundation's Be Well Initiative that focus on health in the five neighborhood region, funders such as Live Well and Kaiser Permanente that use research to engage community groups, medical clinics such as Denver Health, University of Colorado, and Exempla to directly serve medical needs, and community organizations such as TNH2H, neighborhood associations, and faith-based organizations to demonstrate a community voice. While all of these organized efforts work on health from various points of view, rarely do they have a joint vision to create an agreed- upon set of results. 2040 believes it can serve by being a resource to all through its research, evaluation, and capacity building, and by requiring that its knowledge is shared and that program improvements and ideas are communicated to all stakeholders. It will convene these groups and look for joint efforts that engage all to answer the question, "What can we do together that we cannot do apart?"