The Health Fund is investing more than $9.7 million in 26 projects across Michigan through our inaugural Healthy Kids annual grant round. Awards were approved by our Board of Directors at its November 5 meeting.
Funded grants will help fuel a wide range of exciting projects touching communities throughout the state, supporting healthy, thriving children from before birth through early adulthood.
Our 2026-2031 Strategic Framework established the Healthy Kids Initiative to advance our mission by placing children even more squarely at the center of our grantmaking. The program is grounded in the belief that every child in Michigan deserves the opportunity to grow up healthy.
“We are thrilled to support an incredible group of organizations and projects through our first ever grant round,” said Caitlin McEvilly-Rosenbach, Healthy Kids Director. “Our first RFP attracted wide interest from across Michigan. These funded projects stood out among a very competitive pool for their innovation, focus on health equity, commitment and connection to community, and potential to significantly impact children’s health.”
Healthy Kids builds on lessons from past Health Fund investments while creating space to address aspects of childhood and maternal health that were not fully captured in previous programs.
More than a year of research, engagement with partners, experts, and communities, and exploration of Michigan’s children’s health landscape — as well as reviewing our previous investments in children’s health — informed the development of the first RFP and four primary priority areas: access to care and support; maternal and infant health, nutrition and physical activity, and integrated models to advance children’s health.
Projects across all four priority areas feature deep engagement with — and input from — children, families, and communities served by the work. Many focus on interventions with strong potential to improve health outcomes for children and families served, while also creating opportunities to shift or strengthen broader systems that influence their health.
One example is Alcona Health Center’s new school-based health and wellness center in partnership with Tawas Area Schools. Located at Clara Bolen Elementary School, the center will make preventive and primary care — including health screenings, immunizations, behavioral health services, and insurance navigation — more accessible to children and families in Iosco County.
By bringing care directly onto the school campus, the project aims to reduce barriers to health care access that many families in the area face, including challenges with transportation, provider shortages, and insurance. Alcona Health Center’s experience with school-based health clinics, support among partner health care providers, and a clear demonstration of community need and engagement made a strong case for the project’s urgency and potential impact.
Students will help shape the center through a Youth Advisory Council that will inform clinic design, services, and outreach. The grant will support startup and initial operations with the goal of establishing a financially sustainable health center that strengthens connections among families, schools, and health care providers.
The Health Fund’s investment in infants and birthing families also continues under Healthy Kids, with funded projects building on and evolving work previously supported under our Maternal & Infant Health grant round.
One example: a grant to the Michigan Prison Doula Initiative will provide up to 12 weeks of postpartum doula support to up to 25 women each year who give birth while incarcerated. The project responds to a significant gap in care created through a recent loss of funding for prison-based lactation support and current restrictions on doula care that limit women to just two visits after childbirth.
By expanding access to evidence-based postpartum care and documenting the outcomes, the project aims to improve maternal health, support future family reunification, and help develop sustainable funding approaches for these services.
A few other themes observed in our grant round:
- Several projects leverage schools as key places that shape children’s health to deliver services ranging from nutrition to primary care to developmental screening.
- Our long-standing focus on behavioral health carries through with several initiatives delivering targeted support to children, teens, and their families.
- Several projects integrate services to address intersecting needs. Whether embedding behavioral health and childhood development into pediatric primary care, integrating lactation, nutrition, and care coordination, or weaving nutrition and food access with primary care in Federally Qualified Health Centers, these projects tackle critical equity gaps by addressing the whole range of a child’s health needs.
A complete list of our Healthy Kids grants can be found below. Visit our grant database to learn more about these and all of our current and past grants.
HEALTHY KIDS GRANTS
Alcona Citizens for Health, Inc DBA Alcona Health Center
Alcona Health Center – Integrated School-Based Health and Wellness Center at Tawas Area Schools — $500,000
Autism Alliance of Michigan
Pediatric Early Autism Recognition System (PEARS): Improving Early Autism Care in Primary Practice — $745,426
Children’s Advocacy Centers of Michigan
Michigan Statewide Trauma Response Network — $500,000
City of Dearborn
Dearborn Baby Café: Strengthening Early Childhood Health — $75,000
Clinton County Regional Educational Service Agency
Supporting Early On Child Find with Learn the Signs. Act Early. — $89,966
Gleaners Community Food Bank of Southeastern Michigan
More than Meals: A Wrap Around Approach to Addressing Food Security in Wayne County — $219,127
Growth Works
Building a Regional Model for Youth Suicide Prevention and Behavioral Health Access — $342,447
HAVEN
Coordinated Healthcare Access Model for Children Impacted by Domestic and Sexual Violence — $250,010
Lakeshore Food Club
West Michigan School-Based Food Club Consortium: A Barrier-Free Model for Student Access and Community Health — $425,000
Lemontree Foods Inc
Nourishing Michigan’s Children: Statewide Expansion of Lemontree’s Food Resource Navigation Platform — $474,380
Michigan Breastfeeding Network
An Integrated Statewide Model for Lactation, Nutrition, Care Navigation, and Infant Feeding Access — $550,000
Michigan Center for Rural Health
Strengthening Rural Maternal and Infant Emergency Readiness and Care Coordination in Michigan — $503,616
Michigan Department of Education
10 Cents a Meal for Non-School Program Sponsors — $144,820
Michigan Department of Health and Human Services
Preventing Perinatal Depression Through Integrated Healthy Relationships — $440,796
Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity (LEO)
Michigan Youth Mental Health Corps — $249,064
Michigan League for Public Policy
Kids Count in Michigan: 2027-2028 — $200,000
Michigan Primary Care Association
Enhancing Integrated Food and Nutrition Services in FQHCs — $750,000
Michigan Prison Doula Initiative
Perinatal Doula Support for Pregnant Prisoners — $100,000
Oakland County Sheriff PAL Program
Integrated Behavioral Health Care Partnership for Justice Involved Youth in Oakland County — $196,040
Pine Rest Christian Mental Health Services
Pine Rest Child and Adolescent NDD Inpatient Pilot — $250,000
Regents of the University of Michigan
Telling It: A Community-Based Mental Health Access and Step-Down Pathway for Ypsilanti Youth — $203,075
Ruth Ellis Center, Inc.
Increasing Access to Peer Support Services for LGBTQ+ Young People and Caregivers — $500,000
School Nutrition Association of Michigan
Healthy Kids, Healthy Schools: Advancing Scratch Cooking across Michigan — $593,977
Stand with Trans
Geographic Expansion of Clinical Services for Youth — $368,359
Wayne State University
HealthySteps: An Innovative Approach to Integrated Behavioral Health Care to Promote Health Equity — $749,075
Wayne State University
EARLY (Early Assessment and Remediation for Local in Youth) School Based Clinic — $289,600