Iowa gearing up to roll out the Thrive Iowa initiative

When county officials in southeast Iowa were presented with a new opportunity to help their community members in need they quickly took action and applied to become one of the first selected communities in Iowa that would be served in the new Thrive Iowa initiative.  

Last week, in a packed room at the Lee County Health Department in Fort Madison, they heard from Thrive Iowa officials in the first community meeting. 

“Today is a really exciting milestone for us,” Thrive Iowa State Director Page Humphrey said. 

Humphrey is the community service bureau chief at Iowa Health and Human Services (Iowa HHS) and assumed her role as State Director of Thrive Iowa last summer and has been busy working with organizers in 11 counties to get the program launched this spring. The collective impact meetings, which will be held in each of the participating counties, are already underway.  

The meeting in Fort Madison drew community leaders from Lee County as well as Van Buren and Henry Counties, which are all enrolled in Thrive Iowa. 

“It’s a day that we’ve been anticipating for many months now and it really marks the beginning of something transformative in our state for families in need,” Humphrey said. 

Thrive Iowa is a community-based initiative that helps families move from crisis to stability by connecting them with local resources. The initiative uses the collective impact model to unite organizations around shared goals of improving family stability. Instead of navigating multiple services, families experience one coordinated system designed to meet their needs. 

“Collective impact is a structured way for government and community groups to work toward the same outcomes using shared data and measuring outcomes,” said Paul Chapman, Executive Director of Restore Hope.   

Chapman helped start Restore Hope in 2015 as Arkansas was faced with an alarming crisis among young families and high incarceration rates. Through local partnerships, Arkansas communities were able to provide targeted support and guidance to families in need.  

“The sites that we’re implementing early on (in Iowa) are prioritized based on need,” Humphrey said. “Factors like the number of children in foster care, families living in poverty, and unemployment rates.” 

As she welcomed the public to the meeting, Humphrey told them the community was selected because of its high levels of need but also because it was ready to meet the challenges to serve. 

"Over 20 partners stepped forward and provided letters of support which really said loud and clear to us that they wanted to be part of the initiative,” Humphrey said.  

The Lee County Health Department will serve as the backbone organization for Thrive Iowa in Lee, Van Buren and Henry counties.  

Humphrey told the public, many of which were community leaders from the three counties, that their level of commitment speaks volumes and that Iowa HHS is proud to stand alongside them in the initiative. 

“The work that you do today will set the tone for communities across the state,” Humphrey said. 

Humphrey and Chapman from Restore Hope also visited with members from the community during meetings in West Union and Elkader as Fayette and Clayton Counties, with the backbone organization of Northeast Iowa Community Action, prepare to launch Thrive Iowa in their communities. 

The current counties enrolled in the Thrive Iowa initiative are: Lee, Van Buren, Henry, Clayton, Fayette, Black Hawk, Buena Vista, Webster, Warren, Madison, and Cass.  

Collective impact community gatherings are scheduled for the remaining counties in March for the remaining counties.