A GROZzerdam is a local ecosystem of inhabitants and organisations with a mission: By 2040, all Dutch citizens will live at least five years longer in good health, while the health inequalities between the lowest and highest socioeconomic groups will have decreased by 30%. They all have the courage to put their own interests aside for an environment focused on health and well-being instead of illness and care.

A GROZzerdam often starts with entrepreneurial residents starting an initiative to improve the well-being and health of their neighbours. Residents are taking matters into their own hands to make their environment healthier, less lonely or to allow all residents participate more in their own living environment. People with a chronic disease, a lifelong disability and the elderly can participate in society according to their wishes.

These initiatives with new approaches meet the actual needs of residents. They therefore gain support from several organisations in the neighbourhood: the primary school, the general practitioner, the local supermarket, the university, the municipality. However, support is not enough for a real change: the goal is implementing these new approaches into the system.

There is a total of five illustration projects that will focus on each mission of the mission-driven top sectors and innovation policy. These illustration projects will be set up to give the innovations a tangible form and to act as a source of information and inspiration for everybody, nationally as well as internationally.

In 2019, we committed ourselves to many stakeholders around the upcoming GROZzerdammen, both at local and national level. Together with them we formulated the building blocks needed for this breakthrough: from monitoring to outcome-oriented financing. In addition, we have taken a first step to connect existing regional strategies of national players so that they reinforce each other.

Finally, in a core team of GROZ stakeholders, various local vital ecosystems in the making were mapped: what do these regions need for a real breakthrough? How can the Health & Care coalition help with this? Based on the GROZ criteria, the commitment and level of ambition from both sides was coordinated to see which form of cooperation fits best.

This year, the first edition of the Health Impact Accelerator (HIA) took place. In this series of events, several social entrepreneurs gained knowledge and expanded their network in order to create more impact. The series came to a close at a final event, including in-depth Q&A’s with social investors and extensive matchmaking sessions with inspirational presentations of Marieke Hart from Foundation Shareyourmeal and Björn Vennema from Social Finance NL. The investors selected the "The Rehab Academy", an innovative social enterprise, as the winner of the Health Impact Accelerator 2019-2020.

The second edition of the HIA will take place in autumn 2020. Interested? Then enter your Social Impact Team via GROZ@health-holland.com!