The Initiative

The Gulf Research Program (GRP) is developing The ACT Initiative as a multi-phase effort that builds the capacity of communities to collaborate on shared disaster-related priorities that affect their health and resilience.

Phase 1: Planning

Starting in 2025, ACT New Orleans will bring together a variety of participants from disaster-affected communities in New Orleans, LA. Participants will be individuals from local nonprofits (such as community- and faith-based organizations), foundations, academic institutions, and government. Using an innovative scientific process, ACT will guide participants in creating a plan for collaboration based on their shared disaster-related priorities. This plan will include programmatic, funding, research, and policy actions that participants can take together. During this process, participants will explore “adaptive capacities” – a term that refers to the assets (strengths) that communities have and can use to reduce the potential impacts of disasters. While assets can be anything of value, ACT will focus on the knowledge, skills, abilities, resources, and strategies that participants have (that can contribute to a collaboration) and need (that can be obtained by a collaboration). Through this exploration, participants will create a plan to advance at least one shared disaster-related priority as a collaboration. At the end of this process, the collaboration will have an opportunity to develop all or parts of their plan into a proposal for funding upon approval.