Healthy Built Environment Grants

The Healthy Built Environment Grants, offered by the Tennessee Department of Health, aim to enhance community health through improved public spaces. By funding projects that create playgrounds, walking tracks, and outdoor fitness stations, these grants promote physical activity and access to healthy food. Since their inception, over $2.6 million has been awarded to various grantees, particularly benefiting economically distressed areas, thereby fostering a culture of health across Tennessee.

A well-designed built environment can decrease obesity, heart disease, and diabetes rates while increasing physical, mental, and social health and building community resilience. The Tennessee Department of Health (TDH) recognizes the link between the built environment and public health. TDH supports the creation of healthy built environments to protect, promote, and improve the health and prosperity of all Tennesseans.
In 2018, OPP launched a competitive built environment grant program and awarded grants for convening, programming, planning, and construction projects. These built environment projects created and enhanced playgrounds, walking tracks, outdoor fitness stations, greenways, trails, and other publicly accessible spaces to promote physical activity, access to healthy food and social interaction. Many of the grant-funded projects benefited economically distressed or at-risk counties.