Healthy Prisons,
Healthy Communities
Advancing public safety by optimizing nutrition, healthcare, and reentry in America’s correctional systems.
Our Partners
and support agencies and experts in the public and private sectors.
Mission
Vision
About Us
The Healthy Prisons, Healthy Communities Initiative was launched to highlight the connection between correctional health, officer safety, and safer streets. Each year, hundreds of thousands of individuals transition from prisons back into their communities. Their health, stability, and access to support services play a critical role in shaping public health and public safety outcomes.
Recognizing this connection, Healthy Prisons, Healthy Communities brings together leaders from public health, criminal justice, policy, and law enforcement to explore practical strategies that strengthen health, nutrition, and support systems for individuals during incarceration and as they return home.
The initiative has engaged a range of national leaders and policy experts committed to advancing healthier correctional environments and stronger reentry pathways, including Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose focus on public health and environmental health has helped elevate conversations around nutrition, chronic disease, and wellness within institutional settings.
Real Food = Real Change
Real Food =
Real Change
Real Food is back at the center of the American diet – and correctional facilities and communities will be safer for it.
The new “Inverted Pyramid” is a science-backed approach to nourishing the body and mind – reducing chronic disease,
promoting healthy habits, thinking, and long-term health.
Public Health is Public Safety
Project Areas
Public safety is our mission, and health is a critical component. Corrections officers and staff are safer when inmates are healthier and minimizing ultra-processed foods (UPF). If people leave prison healthier they can more readily integrate into society, get a job, and be self-sufficient without committing new crimes.
We focus on three core pillars that address critical drivers of health and successful reentry: nutrition, healthcare delivery and coordination, and community supports. These three pillars reflect a shared commitment to strengthening the systems that support individuals during incarceration and as they return home. If we help these issues while a person is in prison, their chances of reoffending go down.
Healthy Food Makes Safer Prisons – and Communities
Healthy food plays an important role in supporting overall health and wellbeing, with studies showing clear public safety benefits. Thanks to the work of Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the U.S. Department of Health & Humans Services, America is encouraged and empowered to Eat Real Food and our country has new Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Similarly, Secretary Brooke Rollins and the U.S. Department of Agriculture have ensured that American farms continue to produce high-quality food to Make America Healthy Again.
Healthy Prisons, Healthy Communities ensures this great work reaches behind the wall – to keep corrections officers, staff, inmates and the public safer.
Correctional Healthcare: Treating the Sickest to Keep Prisons Safe
Correctional healthcare providers and prisons are tasked with treating the most complex patients in the country. These patients have some of the highest rates of chronic illness and infections as compared to the general population, including asthma, HIV/AIDS, hepatitis C, tuberculosis, obesity, diabetes, heart disease and hypertension, serious mental illness and behavioral health issues, kidney disease, and dental issues. As these issues evolve, correctional leaders must be resourced to treat this complex patient segment.
Reentry and Healthcare: Improving the Continuum of Care
Healthy habits can reduce recidivism, and should continue after release to ensure the person has the best chance of maintaining a healthy lifestyle, securing a job, and achieving the American Dream. This complex task requires many public and private actors to come together to ensure a seamless handoff from prison to the community. Health Prisons, Healthy Communities is optimizing partnerships between prisons and the public health system, insurance companies, community health centers, FQHCs, behavioral health providers, reentry providers, and more, to come together to address a variety of social determinants of health (SDoH).
Reentry and Healthcare: Improving the Continuum of Care
Healthy habits can reduce recidivism, and should continue after release to ensure the person has the best chance of maintaining a healthy lifestyle, securing a job, and achieving the American Dream. This complex task requires many public and private actors to come together to ensure a seamless handoff from prison to the community. Health Prisons, Healthy Communities is optimizing partnerships between prisons and the public health system, insurance companies, community health centers, FQHCs, behavioral health providers, reentry providers, and more, to come together to address a variety of social determinants of health (SDoH).
Healthy Prisons, Healthy Communities
ensures this great work reaches behind the wall –
to keep corrections officers, staff, inmates
and the public safer.
Prison.Care
Lead Partners
Our partners are from law enforcement, federal and state government, healthcare, nutrition, and support agencies and experts in the public and private sectors.
