MSU Extension Community Change Hub

What is the Community Change Hub?

The Community Change Hub is a self-guided, virtual toolkit designed to help you support healthier environments in your community.

It brings together five connected MSU Extension websites that guide you through systems change efforts related to:

• Nutrition
• Physical activity
• Community health

The Hub is designed for community champions who want to make a difference in places where people live, learn, work, and play. It is a collection of practical resources that applies a Six-Step Community Change Model to help you identify shared challenges, bring a team together, build on local strengths and reliable resources, take action, and sustain community change.

How does the Hub Work?

The Community Change Hub uses a five-site framework (collectively called "the Hub") to organize content and guide your experience. You can move between sites based on your needs, using the Hub as a flexible, self-paced system rather than a linear course. 

Start here

1. Community Change Hub: This site introduces the community change model and the roles of the community champion, explains key concepts, and helps you get oriented. You’ll find step-by-step guidance to help build a frame for your own community change efforts.

Then explore four areas of practice

2. Champion Early Health: Find strategies that support healthy beginnings for families and communities, from pregnancy to early childhood.
3. Champion School Wellness: Explore ways to develop student wellness through good nutrition, food access, and active learning.
4. Champion Food Access: Learn how to support change work that helps connect people to food.
5. Champion Active Communities: Discover ways to promote active living from childhood through adulthood.

Each “Champion” site includes examples of healthier environments shaped by the Six-Step Community Change Model. In Community Voice Guides, you’ll see how the six steps are applied to specific focus areas like food pantries and community gardens, supportive breastfeeding spaces, school and childcare environments, and physical activity settings. Explore the Guides, resource listings, and stories of change to inspire your own community work.

Use the downloadable resources to guide your steps

Throughout the Hub you will find links to our comprehensive toolkit, as well as step-by-step guides and worksheets that you can download and print. Use these resources to inform and support your team's initiatives. 

• MSU Extension Six-Step Community Change Model Toolkit
• Identify the Need Guide and Worksheet
• Bring People Together Guide and Worksheet
• Explore What’s Working Guide and Worksheet
• Gather Resources Guide and Worksheet
• Make a Plan and Act Guide and Worksheet
• Reflect and Share Guide and Worksheet

Why was the Hub Created?

The Community Change Hub was developed following the end of federal grant funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Education (SNAP-Ed) on October 1, 2025. It was created and launched by a small group of MSU Extension SNAP-Ed educators retained for one year to ensure the best possible close-out for partners in community health and nutrition. 

For over 30 years, MSU Extension SNAP-Ed educators worked with community partners to make the healthy choice the easier choice in everyday settings.

When SNAP-Ed funding and MSU Extension’s delivery of community education and partner coaching ended, many partner organizations were left without support for nutrition and physical activity initiatives that had been part of their community health strategies. The Hub was developed to support the continuation of community-based health efforts beyond the life of SNAP-Ed by:

• Preserving and sharing effective tools and strategies
• Supporting continued momentum in community health work
• Providing resources that can be used independently

The cessation of SNAP-Ed funding reflects an important reality: MSU Extension staff who created this resource will not be available to provide direct support after September 30, 2026.

A Note About Perspective

This resource is not a one-size-fits-all approach to community change. It reflects:

• The experiences of educators at a large public university
• Partnerships developed through SNAP-Ed
• Public health frameworks commonly used in the United States

These perspectives may not fully reflect all ways of knowing, leading, or creating change. You are therefore encouraged to:

• Adapt tools to fit your community’s values and context
• Center local knowledge and lived experience
• Use what is helpful and leave what is not

Funding for the development of the Community Change Hub was provided by the United States Department of Agriculture Food and Nutrition Service.