Everyone deserves a fair opportunity to have their health needs met.    

Jump IN’s mission is to create healthy places, neighborhoods, and communities where families have real opportunities to make healthy choices that promote their health, vitality, and well-being, including access to affordable healthy food and meaningful opportunities to play and be active. However, many families in central Indiana face barriers when it comes to accessing these resources.  

The risk that children face for overweight and obesity is heavily reliant on social determinants of health. Living in a central Indiana zip code associated with poor housing, high crime, low income and poverty, poor access to transportation, low educational attainment, and other community deficits is related to an increased risk of these health outcomes. Life expectancy in Marion County ranges from 70 to 86 years, depending on what zip code an individual lives in. 

Data from Jump IN reveals that systemic racism continues to have a drastic impact on health outcomes and continues to create health disparities in the central Indiana area. Jump IN works to improve these social determinants in order to reduce the impact that disparities are having on central Indiana families.  

In February 2023, leaders from four of the top health care systems in Indianapolis (Community, Eskenazi, IU, and Franciscan) led a news segment on the topic of racism as a public health crisis. Watch the discussion here to learn more about how racism affects health outcomes, and what local health care and public health leaders are doing to address the inequities and disparities created by this phenomenon.