Healthy Peninsula
• Community inspired • Partner driven • Improving health & well-being
Programs and results
What we aim to solve
Healthy Peninsula’s collaborative community health work is centered on three main Initiatives that cover the life span of residents in our rural service area—the seven towns of the Blue Hill Peninsula and the two island towns of Deer Isle in Hancock County, Maine. Each Initiative was developed in response to community challenges and informed by health data, social determinants of health, effects of poverty, and our capacity to impact community health and well-being: • Healthy Families coordinates a broad coalition of educators, parents, and service providers that focuses on the overarching goal of kindergarten readiness. • Healthy Eating Projects provide farm fresh food to people of all ages and socioeconomic levels, with emphasis on growing, gleaning, cooking, and eating healthy foods. • Healthy Aging currently coordinates a robust nine town AARP Age Friendly Communities partnership, which strives to keep our seniors and chronically ill residents safe, productive, and engaged.
Our programs
What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, and who do the programs serve?
Healthy Aging—Age Friendly Coastal Communities
This project, with 30+ community partners, is a robust network of community members, town governments, service providers, and community organizations working together to create a community where we will all have what we need as we grow older. This project focuses on the WHO/AARP's 8 Domains of Livability, with specific programming related to healthcare access, social isolation, food security, and wellness. It is designed to harness collective community goals and ideas for addressing challenges and gaps in our rural healthcare system. As with all Healthy Peninsula programs, AFCC serves the 9-towns of the Blue Hill Peninsula and Deer Isle/Stonington (Blue Hill, Brooklin, Brooksville, Castine, Deer Isle, Penobscot, Sedgwick, Stonington, and Surry)
Healthy Eating—Magic Food Bus
This innovative project is a collaboration of Healthy Peninsula, local schools, public libraries, local businesses and farms. It is a seasonal program which provides free, fresh local produce and access to summer reading to 14 sites in 9 towns via a portable farm stand operated by volunteers. As with all Healthy Peninsula programs, the Magic Food Bus serves the 9-towns of the Blue Hill Peninsula and Deer Isle/Stonington (Blue Hill, Brooklin, Brooksville, Castine, Deer Isle, Penobscot, Sedgwick, Stonington, and Surry).
Healthy Families -- Child Care Provider Network
Started in early 2020, Healthy Peninsula's Child Care Provider Network is a group of local childcare providers who gather monthly for a video meeting. The Network provides a trusted forum for peer support and professional education for all licensed providers in our region. Based on requests and ideas from Network participants, we have brought in professional development, obtained State approval for continuing education credits for Network meetings, sponsored education regarding state and federal regulations, and more. As with all Healthy Peninsula programs, the Network serves serves the 9-towns of the Blue Hill Peninsula and Deer Isle/Stonington (Blue Hill, Brooklin, Brooksville, Castine, Deer Isle, Penobscot, Sedgwick, Stonington, and Surry).
The Walk-In Café
Healthy Peninsula’s Walk-In Café opened on April 20, 2022, out-of-doors, just behind the First Congregational Church in Blue Hill. Starting the Cafe was in response to an often-heard request by peninsula residents for a safe place to meet with friends to share conversation and food. The Café meets outside near the entrance to Blue Hill Heritage Trust’s Murphy Trail into the fall, when it moves inside the Church to the Jonathan Fisher Hall for colder weather. The Café meets every Wednesday from 10:00 to 11:30 am and serves a variety of baked goods as well as fruits, vegetables, cheese, and crackers. Coffee, tea, and cold drinks are also available. The Walk-In Café is sponsored by Healthy Peninsula in partnership with Friends in Action, the First Congregational Church of Blue Hill, and Blue Hill Heritage Trust.
Welcome Baby Bags
Healthy Peninsula provides baby bags for all new babies at their first well-child visit with primary care providers at Northern Light Blue Hill Hospital's three practices in our service area (Northern Light Primary Care in Castine, Blue Hill, and Stonington). The bags contain useful baby supplies, a handmade sweater, hat, or blanket donated by community knitters/crocheters, as well as Early Childhood and Food Security resource guides to help new parents stay safe, happy, and healthy. As with all of Healthy Peninsula services, this project serves families in the 9-town region of the Blue Hill Peninsula and Deer Isle/Stonington.
Where we work
External reviews
Goals & Strategy
Learn about the organization's key goals, strategies, capabilities, and progress.
Charting impact
Four powerful questions that require reflection about what really matters - results.
What is the organization aiming to accomplish?
Healthy Peninsula’s service area contains some of the most beautiful rural communities in Maine. Although our area experiences a lack of some quality-of-life resources—jobs, transportation, childcare, family activities—we also have a history of ‘taking care of our own’ in these rural towns. This tradition has informed our dedication to harnessing the talents of local residents, community assets, and regional services to collaboratively address challenges.
As a result of our community health Initiatives, we envision a strong network of local organizations, town governments, businesses, churches, and service providers, which are committed to working together, sharing resources, and helping to develop innovative and culturally-enlightened strategies to address needs. We also envision community members who are better informed about health and wellness issues, and engaged in the conversations and actions that will help their friends and neighbors, of all ages, live ‘better’ lives.
What are the organization's key strategies for making this happen?
Since 2001, Healthy Peninsula has acted as a “backbone” or coordinating organization, helping communities in our service area develop a number of successful health projects. When bringing together local and regional partners, we help find a shared vision for change, measureable goals, and data-driven, evidenced-based actions to engage a community’s resources and develop new ways of working together. By building trust within committed partners throughout the healthcare and community care networks, we assist in co-creating our best opportunity to make a difference.
Our activities are not short-term projects, but long-term efforts, driven by community challenges and supported by evidence-based strategies that move us toward systemic changes for people of all ages within our communities.
What are the organization's capabilities for doing this?
Healthy Peninsula has an eighteen-year track record of effective collaboration with local community groups, regional non-profit agencies, professional and service providers, and community members in the nine towns we serve. Initially one of the original thirty-one Healthy Maine Partnerships, since 2011 Healthy Peninsula has relied on private grants and donations to successfully sustain and expand our initiatives. Our trademark expertise in facilitation, community needs assessment, and volunteer coordination, and our commitment to evidence-based best practices and ongoing evaluation, allows us to manage initiatives that bring groups together to respond to broad community concerns and challenges.
Because we recognize that no one organization or program can single-handedly address complex issues such as kindergarten readiness, healthy eating, or an aging population, we develop multi-sector coalitions that break down organizational silos, bring needed services to our rural communities, and mobilize grassroots efforts to improve health and well-being.
With a small, stable, and efficient staff and a working Board of Directors, we are able to leverage a host of volunteers and in-kind work from our partners to accomplish significant results. No other regional or local organization has the capacity to manage collective impact strategies on community health issues in the Blue Hill Peninsula area.
Our Executive Director and dedicated staff have professional backgrounds in social work, legal issues, community engagement, food security, and social media. Members of our working Board have expertise and experience in medical, behavioral and public health, project evaluation, organizational finances, business relationships, food security, early childhood education, and print and social media.
What have they accomplished so far and what's next?
Healthy Peninsula’s overarching accomplishment is our experience and expertise in developing coalitions, partnerships, and a core of volunteers to explore, plan, and implement community health efforts. Our specific programming accomplishments are found within our Initiatives. As noted, many of our activities are currently ongoing or expanding.
Healthy Families
• Early Childhood Interest Group (ECIG) convenes monthly meetings and collaborates with a broad group of participants to address the root causes of developmental and social-emotional delays in our youngest children, and to improve outcomes (2011–present)
• Series of Early Childhood conferences with focus on brain development, ACES, poverty and resources, 80–145 attendees each conference (2011–2013)
• Planned and carried out grant-funded survey of service area educators and preK/K parents to help determine EC activities (2015)
• Facilitated grant-funded planning, with 14 partners, for data collection and action planning in the prenatal to age 3 years population (2018–present)
Healthy Eating
• Magic Food Bus (MFB) distributes farm fresh food at no cost, currently at 14 sites in 7 towns, June through September, offers recipes, cooking tips, health information (2010–present)
• Demonstration/Community Mini Garden maintained by volunteers to engage children/seniors and to grow produce for the MFB (2015–present)
• Summer Garden Camps piloted at 2 schools with age appropriate curriculum that includes reading, art, gardening, and food preparation skills (2017–present)
• Senior cooking for residents of one low income housing facility monthly (2018–present)
• Food Security collaboration with a regional partner and a local day camp to improve nutrition for campers who are food insecure (2018–present)
Healthy Aging
• Grant-funded 4-year Thriving in Place Downeast project, an innovative collaborative effort to support seniors, those with chronic conditions, and caregivers in remaining independent and safe in their homes and communities (2013–2017)
• AARP Age Friendly Coastal Communities brings together town governments, community partners to create social and wellness opportunities for people of all ages (2017–present)
• Choices That Matter promotes Advance Directives for people of all ages to help plan for end-of-life care, organized and facilitated in partnership with regional hospital (2017–present)
• Catalyzing Rural Health Transformation is a collaboration with the local hospital and Emergency Services to bring medical support and surveillance to older and chronically ill patients in their homes to help continuity of care and to help prevent hospital admissions (2018-present)
Financials
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Operations
The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick.
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Connect with nonprofit leaders
SubscribeBuild relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. Try a low commitment monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
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Healthy Peninsula
Board of directorsas of 02/20/2024
Ms Elizabeth Sylvia
Kurt Stoll
Brooksville
Candice Bray
Sedgwick
Trish Cooper
Blue Hill
Mary Ellin Logue
Surry
Zeya Lorio
Blue Hill
Elizabeth Sylvia
Surry
Deborah Turner
Blue Hill
Allan Currie
Brooksville
Alice Hildebrand
Brooklin
Nichole Johnson
Blue Hill
Mary Beth Mitchell
Surry
Sara Trafton-Young
Blue Hill
Organizational demographics
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