phoenixprograms - 
Following is the story as appearing on the Columbia Daily Tribune website here:
Grants boost programs including PedNet
Health foundation gives $116K locally.
Four Columbia not-for-profit agencies have been awarded grants totaling $116,000 as part of a $3.2 million list of Missouri Foundation for Health grants announced yesterday.
Locally, grant awards were made to the PedNet Coalition for $63,120; Columbia/Boone County Department of Public Health and Human Services, $25,000; Phoenix Programs, $19,775; and Missouri River Communities Network, $8,395.
PedNet’s funding will support a project in coordination with Columbia Public Schools that aims to ensure children will be able to walk to and from school daily. That grant comes through MFH’s Healthy and Active Communities initiative.
The health department’s funding is intended to help buy equipment and supplies to serve residents’ health care needs. Other area county health departments receiving the one-year, $25,000 grants include Randolph, Callaway, Cooper and Howard counties.
The grant to the Missouri River Communities Network, through the foundation’s Community Health and Prevention program, will be used to support community gardens, create a database of farmers markets and host conferences to help the markets build vendor and customer bases.
“We already do these things,” Executive Director Steve Johnson said, but the new funding will provide for “some season-extending activities” for select Central Missouri community gardens and to help older adults and people with disabilities have access to gardening opportunities.
Phoenix Programs will use its grant to begin a planning process meant to simplify getting treatment and services for multiple health care needs.
Phoenix Programs already has a record of combining mental health care with substance abuse treatment, said Heather Harlan, prevention specialist.
“In the long run, it’s going to be much simpler for people to get help,” Harlan said. “Right now, it’s a very ‘siloed’ system: You go here for your substance abuse treatment; you go there for your primary care doctor; you go here for your mental health.”
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act encourages collaboration among agencies and health providers, and future federal funding for many programs will require funded agencies to show they are effective.
“We’re embracing that vision,” Harlan said.
Reach Jodie Jackson Jr. at 573-815-1713 or e-mail jjackson@columbiatribune.com.
