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Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE) centers provide government-funded medical care and social services to those aged 55 and above who qualify for nursing home care but can still live independently with some assistance. There are currently more than 160 PACE centers in 32 states. PACE centers are also gaining momentum as a nursing home alternative, as several states have begun passing legislation and making policy changes to allow Medicaid to cover PACE care.

The Quinault Indian Nation’s Family Wellness Court provides a culturally relevant alternative to traditional Western court systems that focuses on healing rather than punishment. 100 of the 400 tribal courts in the country have wellness courts for adults, families and youth, providing substance use disorder support, mental health care, and other family support services.

The Blueprint for Health model expands primary care access by requiring insurance providers in the state to pay additional monthly fees to cover more services for patients. Expanded services are provided by Patient-Centered Medical Homes and Community Health Teams, including nurses and counselors, at no cost to patients. Since starting in 2008, this model has helped significantly reduce medical and pharmaceutical claims.

Utility companies across the United States are using virtual power plants to meet electricity demand, access backup power, and lower the electric bills of participants. To make these power plants work, the utilities use energy from the battery storage systems of customers who have home solar arrays.

State governments in the United States are implementing Extended Producer Responsibility laws to fund recycling programs. The laws impose a fee on the manufacturers of products that become recyclable waste. The money earned is designated for projects that increase recycling rates.

To improve voting access for residents of the Navajo Nation, who often don’t have official addresses, the Rural Utah Project partnered with Google to assign and distribute Plus Codes, more accurate address coordinates that use longitude and latitude. The organization has since registered nearly 2,000 new voters using the Plus Codes, and the new addresses have resulted in other unexpected benefits, such as improved response time for emergency responders and better access to delivery services.

Pejuta Waste O’Tipi is an indigenous-led resource that provides support to the local homeless community, including shelter, meals, cultural healing, peer support and leadership training to help them reenter the community. The shelter serves meals to over 100 people each day, and more than half of the participants have maintained sobriety since visiting the shelter.

Several cities have fully banned or passed ordinances regulating Airbnb and other short-term rentals to prevent the cities from being overrun by tourists and rental properties. These policies combat the “Airbnb effect” that has been seen in cities from Irvine, California all the way to Bed-Stuy in New York. Cities that have passed these ordinances see lower rent rates, more equitable housing markets and a more sustainable tourism economy.

The Chinese American Service League’s (CASL) Change InSight coalition surveys communities in more Asian languages to allow for more inclusive data collection, particularly among low-income AAPIs. Better data collection increases the visibility of the challenges under-resourced AAPIs face, allowing the CASL to launch social service programs to address challenges in the community, like food insecurity.

Biochar is an organic material that can be mixed with soil to improve soil health, increase crop production, and sequester carbon. To make it, wood or other biomass is heated at high temperatures in an oxygen-deprived environment, like a kiln.

After the Oregon Legislature voted to reverse a law decriminalizing drug possession for personal use in response to a spike in overdoses, advocates attributed the legislation’s failure to poor implementation, complications related to the COVID-19 pandemic, and inadequate time to produce results.

The Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association launched a program to support local fishing businesses and address food insecurity during the pandemic that continues to do so today. The nonprofit buys fish at a more than fair price from local businesses and donates them to food banks and public school food programs.

The Surge Project and EmpowerED Birmingham uplift local youth by providing mentorships, tutoring, healthcare resources, workforce development programs and educational opportunities in various fields. In the program's 2023 pilot partnership with the National Training Institute for Healthcare technicians, 32 of the 40 participants graduated with a phlebotomy or EKG certification, and 19 of them were local high school students.

Communities in the United States are slowly replacing small culverts that alter the flow of streams and block the paths of migratory fish species with wider culverts and bridges, allowing the ecosystems to recover.

Red Rabbit provides nutritious, culturally diverse lunches to students at two local schools. The program promotes cross-cultural exchange among students by exposing them to different dishes from various cultures while ensuring they’re getting healthy meals that hit all the major food groups, as most students get the majority of their meals at school.

Public schools in Hennepin County have offered free school-based mental healthcare services to students since 2000, with the number of schools offering care continuously growing. Across the 263 Hennepin County schools that have implemented school-based mental health care, suicide attempts have decreased by 15%.

The “In Her Hands” program from The Georgia Resilience and Opportunity (GRO) Fund provides about $850 per month for two years to 654 women living below the federal poverty line with no strings attached. Guaranteed income programs like this fight poverty and help people see benefits like having access to funds to care for themselves and their children, pursue higher education, pay off debts and catch up or get ahead on bills.

The city of Denver, Colorado, is encouraging its residents to reduce their transportation emissions with an incredibly popular e-bike rebate program. Several times a year, the city offers a set amount of income-based vouchers on a first-come, first-served basis that cover up to $1,400 of an e-bike purchase.

Produce prescription programs like FreshRx Oklahoma and Recipe4Health are taking off as ways to combat heart problems and other diseases like diabetes. These programs provide free fruits and veggies to participants, helping increase access to healthy foods and address food insecurity. Research over the course of a year shows Recipe4Health participants significantly lowered their cholesterol and food security rates among participants dropped from 59% to 48%.

After chronic absenteeism rates spiked during the pandemic, staff and administrators in Ashland CIty Schools emphasized building strong relationships with students and their families, making it easier to intervene in cases of significant absences. School leaders say it’s part of a strategy that has helped chronic absenteeism rates drop by roughly 14 percent year over year.

After extreme flooding damaged homes, the energy efficiency utility Efficiency Vermont offered emergency flood rebates to those impacted. Recovery teams helped people plan and find funding to repair and replace energy systems and appliances with more efficient models that will help them reach their decarbonization goals. In this circumstance, exceptions were made to include rebates for high-efficiency fossil fuel systems, too.

In response to varying abortion bans across states, nonprofit organizations are emerging to help women in states with strict abortion laws access the care they need. Nonprofits like the Center for Reproductive Rights, Northwest Abortion Access Fund and Indigenous Idaho Alliance provide women with free abortion pills, help them travel out of state for care and even challenge local courts attempting to pass strict trigger laws.

A specialized software called AttendanceK12 helps school secretaries, attendance counselors, and administrators more easily track student absences so they can intervene with families sooner, even offering options to automatically send parents an email when students reach a certain threshold of missed school hours. School leaders consider the technology an important element of a strategy that has helped reduce chronic absenteeism rates.

Python removal agents with South Florida’s Water Management District hunt the invasive Burmese python in the Florida Everglades to prevent the snakes from continuing to destroy the ecosystem. Since launching the program in 2017, agents have removed 8,565 pythons across the state.

After Alaska and Maine implemented ranked-choice voting, which allows citizens to rank candidates in the order of their preference, voters reported feeling more engaged in the process and noticing less extreme rhetoric among politicians running for office. Despite efforts to repeal the system on the basis that it is confusing, about 70 percent of voters ranked more than one candidate on their ballot.