The Merrimack Valley Project is detailing how it plans to spend $1 million over five years to build an intergenerational organizing movement for health equity.
As WHAV reported Monday, the nonprofit will share in $17.9 million in Massachusetts Community Health and Healthy Aging Funds distributed statewide. Merrimack Valley Project Executive Director Julio Mejia outlined his background and how it helps shape the organization’s goals.
“I was raised in Lawrence in a working-class immigrant family and I have seen firsthand how housing costs, access to healthcare and immigration policies affect our neighbors. For decades, the Merrimack Valley Project has worked alongside residents, especially people with lived experience, to organize for safer housing, better community health outcomes and protections for immigrant families,” he said.
Work will focus on the Greater Lawrence, Lowell and Haverhill communities as well as regionally across the Merrimack Valley, he said, while contributing to broader efforts to address the root causes of health inequities through lasting policy, systems and environmental change.
Mejia said investments will focus on three core areas. The first is working on long-lasting, community-driven policy, systems and environmental changes that will make it easier to lead healthy lives and which will reduce health inequities such as racial patterns of segregation in communities and a lack of affordable housing production. Second will be to organize and coordinate community health improvement planning efforts through a variety of partnerships to collectively set and address community health goals. A final focus works to address policies and systems that increase opportunities for healthy aging.
“This investment will bring young people, parents, and elders together to identify local priorities, shape solutions, and advance the policy changes our communities need while partnering and holding decision-makers accountable. We are working toward a long-term sustainable future in which every family can thrive in healthier, more affordable, and more livable communities across the Merrimack Valley,” Mejia added,
Mejia is scheduled to appear on WHAV’s “Win for Breakfast” program Thursday, Sept. 24, at 8:15 a.m. The show may be heard via radio and 24/7 Live Stream from WHAV.net.