Building Healthy Communities expands throughout Monterey County

A mission to improve people’s health and well being, especially in underserved communities. It’s the goal of the California Endowment.

Now, the local group behind that effort wants to expand outside of East Salinas.

Building Healthy Communities East Salinas is an initiative funded by the California Endowment.

But now it wants to move beyond East Salinas to promote racial equity to more of the Central Coast.

“If we want to address structural problems, we need to be looking beyond East Salinas, looking at the city level, the county level,” said Andrea Manzo, Hub manager at East Salinas Building Healthy Communities.

Though the group has done work outside the area before, now it wants to spread racial equity all across Monterey County.

“It can’t just be isolated knowing that we’re not forgetting about East Salinas but the success of East Salinas is actually dependent on everybody else’s success,” Manzo said.

The move to expand is also getting support from local officials.

“The whole community working together as one versus, East Salinas, South Salinas, because we all are one,” said Salinas Mayor Joe Gunter.

“Too often we forget that we have outlying communities, rural communities that need services, need certain things that make the quality of life better for them,” said Simón Salinas, District 3 Supervisor in Monterey County.

And that’s something those with the initiative say they’ll now be able to do.

“We’re going to have a little bit more flexibility around the type of support that we give to cities and counties and other institutions,” Manzo said.

While their efforts will now be focused on the whole county, they hope to spread racial equity much further.

“This is something that’s needed across the nation, just given where we are in our nation now,” Manzo said.

To find out more about Building Healthy Communities, click here.