Our Mission, Leadership & Commitment to Health Equity

Health Promotion Project was founded in 2011 by Dr. Adrienne Holloway, a public health researcher and certified health education specialist who spent a decade studying chronic disease disparities in urban communities. After completing her Doctor of Public Health degree at the University of Minnesota, Dr. Holloway was struck by the stark contrast between the wealth of evidence supporting community-based prevention interventions and the limited availability of such programs in the neighborhoods that needed them most.

In the Cedar-Riverside, Phillips, and North Minneapolis neighborhoods, rates of type 2 diabetes were nearly three times the state average. Tobacco use among recent immigrant communities remained significantly above national benchmarks. Access to preventive screenings was hampered by language barriers, transportation challenges, insurance gaps, and cultural mistrust of institutional healthcare. The research was clear: well-designed, culturally adapted community health promotion programs could dramatically reduce these disparities. But the programs simply did not exist at the scale or in the languages necessary to reach the people who would benefit most.

Dr. Holloway launched Health Promotion Project with a $15,000 seed grant from the Minnesota Department of Health and a team of three volunteer community health workers. The first program, a pilot version of what would become the Healthy Foundations curriculum, was delivered in a church basement in Cedar-Riverside to 28 Somali women. Within 12 weeks, participants demonstrated measurable improvements in blood pressure, dietary behaviors, and physical activity levels. Those early results attracted additional funding from HRSA and the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota Foundation, enabling the organization to hire its first full-time staff, expand programming to new neighborhoods, and develop the tobacco cessation and diabetes prevention curricula that would eventually serve thousands of community members.

Today, Health Promotion Project operates from its Hennepin Avenue headquarters and delivers programming at 47 community sites across Minneapolis. The organization has an annual operating budget of $2.1 million, a staff of 24 (including 14 certified community health workers), and has served more than 28,000 community members since its founding. In 2019, the organization received CDC recognition as a National Diabetes Prevention Program provider. In 2022, the University of Minnesota School of Public Health named Health Promotion Project its Community Partner of the Year for sustained contributions to health equity research and practice.

Health Promotion Project adheres to the Code of Ethics for the Health Education Profession as established by the Coalition of National Health Education Organizations. Our work is guided by the following principles:

• Community Sovereignty: Programs are designed with, not for, the communities we serve. Community advisory councils composed of program participants and neighborhood leaders guide curriculum development, language adaptation, and site selection.
• Evidence-Based Practice: Every intervention we deliver is supported by peer-reviewed research and evaluated through validated assessment instruments. We publish our outcomes data annually and share evaluation findings with the public health research community.
• Health Equity: We prioritize the neighborhoods and populations that experience the greatest health disparities. Our staffing, language capacity, and site selection reflect the demographic composition of the communities with the highest preventable disease burden.
• Accessibility: All core programs are free. We provide childcare, transportation assistance, interpretation in 18 languages, and ADA-accessible facilities. No one is ever turned away for inability to pay.
• Cultural Responsiveness: Our community health workers are recruited from the communities they serve. They share language, cultural context, and lived experience with participants, building trust and ensuring that health education resonates with diverse worldviews and practices.
• Financial Stewardship: We maintain an 84% program services ratio, ensuring that the vast majority of every dollar funds direct community health services. Our financials are audited annually and our Form 990 is publicly available.