Our environments determine our health.

People thrive when they earn living wages and live in communities with parks and playgrounds, grocery stores selling nutritious food, and neighbors who know one another. Without a healthy environment, people are more likely to suffer from obesity or one of the many chronic diseases plaguing the United States: diabetes, asthma, and heart disease.

Preventing disease and creating healthy neighborhoods requires change in both the food environment - including how food is grown, processed, distributed, and sold - and the physical environment - from how neighborhoods are built to the transportation systems that serve them. There is widespread recognition that physical and food environments are inextricably linked, and that - together - they can foster or inhibit our ability to eat well and thrive.

Advocates from various fields are beginning to see how their work can enhance progress in other fields, and how their efforts can foster policy and environmental changes that help families and children lead healthier lives.

The Healthy Eating Active Living Convergence Partnership also recognizes that to improve food and activity environments, existing disparities must be addressed. Therefore, the Partnership aims to strenghten and accelerate collaborative efforts among practitioners, policymakers, funders, and advocates to support healthy eating and active living.

Through policy and environmental change, we can create healthy people in healthy places -- in every community.