Welcome to Well Connected Communities
The nation’s Cooperative Extension System and its 4-H youth development program have the scale, reach, and experience to act as important partners and change agents for health equity. Extension’s Well Connected Communities initiative helps build diverse, multigenerational, cross-sector coalitions that can recognize and address systemic health inequities. By intentionally forging connections, building capacity, and taking action in these communities and across the Extension network we can ensure that life-long health and well-being are within everyone’s reach.
Our Approach
Wave Two of the Well Connected Communities Initiative is focused on supporting health equity by developing and supporting policy, systems and environmental (PSE) change in communities and throughout the Cooperative Extension System.

1. We are forging connections, building capacity and taking action in communities across the nation and across the Cooperative Extension System.
2. We are helping local health coalitions use combined youth-adult voice and action to recognize and address systemic health inequities in their communities.
3. Across the Extension network we are scaling successful innovations from this work and making institutional shifts in order to catalyze ambitious changes at the local-, state-, and national-level.
4. We believe that the Policy, Systems, and Environmental (PSE) changes that come out of this local and system-level work will advance the nation’s health equity movement so that life-long health and well-being are within everyone’s reach.
Where We Are Working
Wave Two Land-grant Universities
Montana State University
Purdue University
South Dakota State University
Tennessee State University
The Pennsylvania State University
University of Arizona
University of Delaware
University of Georgia
University of Idaho
University of Maryland
University of Maryland Eastern Shore
University of Nebraska – Lincoln
University of New Hampshire
University of Tennessee
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Utah State University
West Virginia University