Sumayo Mohamed, Associate Program Officer, Prevention
Catherine Seneviratne, Sr. Program Manager, Prevention
Steve Metcalf, Strategic Communications Manager
Rochelle Smith, Communications Specialist
Arcora Foundation
Good nutrition is essential to good oral as well as overall health. A community-based organization in central Washington state called APOYO shares this belief with Arcora Foundation. Based in Ellensburg, an agricultural community about a 2-hour drive east of Seattle, APOYO has served Latinx and immigrant populations in the region for more than 30 years. APOYO—which stands for Allied People Offering Year-Round Outreach—also means support in Spanish. Beyond food and nutrition services, the organization has long supported immigrant and Latinx families with culturally relevant outreach, advocacy, and resource navigation. But during the summer of 2025, their ability to support communities was in jeopardy.
That’s when APOYO temporarily lost funding because of changes and delays to state and federal grant processes. Their food assistance programs stalled while community demand increased. For a rural food bank with limited alternatives, the loss of funding meant hardships for local families who had come to rely on APOYO. The uncertainty about how to continue to support the community was overwhelming.
Alignment Creates Opportunity
Through a partnership with Arcora Foundation, APOYO was able to continue supporting families in central Washington. Arcora provided funding to help APOYO sustain its operations at a time when the organization was at risk of closing and could no longer reliably provide food to the community. Although supporting food access represented a new type of investment for Arcora, it aligned with our mission to advance oral health equity. Oral health is closely connected to overall health, and access to nutritious food supports both. By investing in APOYO, Arcora helped preserve a community resource while advancing a more integrated approach to health equity. From our community engagement efforts, we learned about APOYO’s important work and found alignment in how our organizations strive to:
- Uplift people in underinvested in communities.
- Center community wisdom and expertise to co-create solutions.
- Work toward equity as a means to justice.
Through our Healthy Behaviors Program—which co-creates behavior change strategies with partners that are community specific and culturally responsive—we funded APOYO to help sustain their operations. As our partnership deepened, our connection to each other grew through other funding opportunities, the sharing of resources, and meetings. We saw APOYO and understood that their work reflects the essential connection between oral and overall health.
Amplifying Trust
When organizations like APOYO receive support, they become trusted messengers for prevention, education, and health promotion. In communities where families may face barriers to health care access, language access, transportation, or insurance coverage, organizations rooted in cultural trust are well-positioned to connect residents with preventive health information and resources.
Through our Healthy Behaviors Program, we collaborated with APOYO to add oral health education into food distribution settings to elevate the connection between oral health equity and social determinants of health, such as:
- Food security.
- Economic stability.
- Access to trusted services.
By supporting organizations like APOYO already integrated into and familiar with communities, philanthropy can strengthen both immediate and long-term individual and community health outcomes.
These efforts are particularly important in communities where oral health disparities intersect with broader social and economic inequities. Individuals experiencing food insecurity are also more likely to face barriers to routine dental care, untreated oral disease, and delayed preventive services. Community-centered prevention strategies can help bridge these gaps by bringing oral health education and resources into familiar and accessible environments.
Investments in Relationships and Communities
Initiatives like this serve as an important lesson for philanthropy: improvements in health equity often come from investments that strengthen the systems and relationships communities already trust. When prevention efforts are embedded within existing community networks, organizations can expand their reach, improve engagement, and build more sustainable pathways to health.
Rather than relying solely on traditional information delivery models, initiatives like our Healthy Behaviors Program demonstrate how oral health promotion can become part of broader community wellness efforts. By meeting families where they are and integrating oral health into everyday support systems, philanthropy can help advance more equitable, community-centered approaches to preventive care. Now is the time for philanthropic organizations to actively invest in and support trusted community partners, like food banks, to not only advance health equity but also drive systems change.
Traditionally, philanthropy has focused on creating new programs rather than leveraging existing community infrastructure. Organizations that promote food security, like APOYO, serve millions of households each year and are uniquely positioned to support health promotion efforts because of their longstanding relationships with families as a trusted community resource. Today, families in central Washington state are thriving thanks to APOYO.
For Arcora, the outcome is another example of what we all can accomplish when we collaborate with, fund, and amplify the work of community-based organizations to ensure everyone can enjoy good oral and overall health with no one left behind. Another lesson from Arcora’s work with APOYO is that the most effective path to improving health and advancing equity may begin with recognizing and building on a community’s existing strengths and assets. APOYO was already known as a trusted and safe place within the community. Partners should consider how existing community structures and relationships can be supported and leveraged rather than creating new partnerships or solutions that may not reflect community needs. Building trust takes time and investing in organizations that have already earned that trust can lead to more responsive and sustainable outcomes.