In Muscatine, Iowa, a partnership between local organizations and University of Iowa researchers is addressing poverty by creating a unique economic navigator program that considers multiple social determinants of health. Called Fueling the Future (FtF), this program highlights the importance of community voices and the impact of academic-community collaborations in creating meaningful change.
Local Solutions for Local Community Needs
A network of community partners noticed that many households in Muscatine remained in food insecurity despite the many traditional food interventions the community had in effect for years. A coalition of these partners, called the FtF Network Board, was established to consider more effective interventions. Recognizing that poverty stems from interconnected challenges, the Board created a comprehensive intervention. The new program aimed to reduce barriers faced by low-income families through interconnected stabilization, barrier reduction, education, high-demand jobs, and workforce development.
For Charla Schafer, a network partner and president of the Community Foundation of Greater Muscatine, the urgency was clear. Rather than continuing to provide temporary relief to the same struggling families year after year, she explains, the community needed to focus efforts on improving entire family circumstances to disrupt food insecurity.
The solution involved working with the local community college to develop six-week certificate programs in high-demand fields, ensuring families could see almost immediate income improvement without sacrificing months or years to traditional education programs. Central to the program's success was a navigator-based wraparound support model, where participating organizations each contributed their expertise in health, social services, or economic development to address complex barriers families encountered from childcare to transportation to housing stability.
A Community-Led Partnership Enhanced by Research and Data Analysis
What distinguished this initiative was its fundamentally community-led structure. The FtF coalition had identified the problem, designed the solution, and reached out to the University of Iowa's research team for partnership and support. Specifically, Rima Afifi, professor in the College of Public Health and Director of the CDC-funded Prevention Research Center for Rural Health (PRC-RH), Heidi Haines, Deputy Director of the PRC-RH and other PRC-RH faculty and student colleagues collaborated with the FtF coalition to assist with evaluation planning, development, and analysis of the program. Rima Afifi describes this model as exemplifying the highest level of community-engaged practice. Her team's role was to serve community goals, which she calls an incredible privilege for academics.
Fueling the Future is one of those programs, implemented by a coalition of organizations working together to address food insecurity and poverty reduction in Muscatine. The coalition had developed the program with such close attention to the needs of Muscatine, and the facilitators and barriers to success. The participating organizations each had vast expertise in various aspects of health or social or economic services and were able to address all the barriers that arose in getting custodial parents into the certificate program,” says Afifi.
The strength of the partnership, she emphasizes, came from organizations that respected each other's contributions, collaborated fully, shared resources freely, and maintained deep commitment to the dignity and potential of those they serve.
Real-Time Adaptation and Learning
The academic team's inquiry strengthened the program by allowing organizers to refocus, reevaluate, and reengage around new perspectives. Schafer notes that this created real-time shifts that gained stronger and deeper insights, with the compiled data providing a roadmap to next steps and proving instrumental in achieving greater program efficacy, scalable outcomes, and stabilized families.
Rima Afifi agrees, adding, ““The coalition also knew that flexibility was critical... and we saw how the program adapted in real time and found innovative solutions that preserved the mission and value of the FtF program while also understanding the changing needs of their families.”
The program demonstrated how flexibility and adaptation were critical to success. The coalition understood that addressing multiple determinants of health simultaneously required constant responsiveness to changing family circumstances. As needs changed, partners found innovative solutions that preserved FtF's core mission and values.
This community-driven, data-supported approach demonstrates the value of centering community voices in research. By drawing on local expertise to guide design and implementation, Fueling the Future offers a practical example of how collaborative efforts can address multiple social determinants of health effectively.