Trusted Messenger Initiative Grants

Scope of services

Grant proposals can benefit another county or multiple counties in addition to Ramsey County. This is not a requirement for applicants, but supports the goal to broaden the reach of this initiative. The vision for the Trusted Messenger Initiative is to center even more community voices that have a key role in building public health capacity across Minnesota.

Focus of work

Saint Paul — Ramsey County Public Health will partner with local organizations to enhance, expand and financially support the Trusted Messenger Initiative. Each priority area describes opportuniTrusted Messenger and public health collaboration. Each organization may only submit one application and can only select one priority area below.

1. Healthy Communities: The applicant collaborates to increase awareness and access to culturally informed public health information and programs which include healthy aging, Hmong health, sexual violence services, adolescent health, and child and teen checkups. Extra effort is made to reach racially and ethnically diverse communities, immigrant families and new Minnesotans who face the greatest health inequalities, language barriers, and/or may be isolated from county and other community services.

2. Women, Infants, and Children (WIC): The applicant collaborates to increase WIC program awareness and referrals of pregnant and postpartum women and their children so they may receive healthy food, nutrition education and lactation support. Extra effort is made to reach people early in pregnancy and multigenerational African American populations.

3. Family Health and Home Visiting: The applicant collaborates to promote equity in birth outcomes for racially and ethnically diverse communities, especially African American, Native American, Latino/x and immigrant populations. Extra effort is made to support families, fathers and other caregivers, to navigate care before and after birth and to increase cultural and community connections using a holistic approach.

4. Clinical Services: The applicant collaborates to increase awareness and access to vaccines and immunizations, tuberculosis care, sexual and reproductive health services such as HIV and STD testing and treatment, syringe services, wound care, naloxone training and outreach for people using drugs.

5. Environmental Health: The applicant collaborates to find creative ways to increase participation in food scraps pick-up, household hazardous waste drop-off and electronics recycling programs, especially within racially and ethnically diverse communities. They also increase awareness of the Environmental Service Center, the future “one stop shop” for recycling and waste collection.

6. Climate Action: The applicant collaborates to increases awareness of climate change and its impacts on health as well as the county’s resources and programs to lessen those impacts.