A Message From Rippel’s President and CEO, Becky Payne

February 14, 2025: I have heard from a number of you in the last 24 hours as you discover that the Federal Plan for Equitable Long Term Recovery & Resilience (ELTRR) is no longer available on the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion website.

This Plan was a companion to the Thriving Together Springboard and has served as a beacon of possibility since the spring of 2020 for thinking differently about the role of government in shaping community conditions for well-being. Merely removing a webpage cannot erase the momentum that is growing across the country in our ongoing quest to thrive together.

I did not intend to comment on the ELTRR’s removal—it is not surprising given the sweeping removal of countless other life saving and critical resources. However, I began to hear troubling questions about what the removal might mean. Could we still use the vital conditions framework that the Plan is centered around? Will federal resources continue to support vital conditions related work? What will happen to the communities using the framework? 

As the person who initiated the Springboard and the ELTRR, who had the privilege of facilitating the interagency workgroup that completed it—and now has the even greater honor of walking alongside all of you in the movement to thrive together, I hope my reflections can help us discern where to focus our energy and remind us of the power we have to keep making progress.

What the ELTRR Was, and What It Wasn’t

The Plan truly was the most comprehensive attempt to rethink the complexity and interdependence of our federal agencies, enable them to operate more strategically and effectively, and draft recommendations that would fundamentally unleash the full potential of government resources to serve our communities. It was born out of the COVID-era recognition that the long food lines, anxiety, depression, shuttered businesses, and more, were not solely the result of a pandemic—they were evidence of decades of underinvestment in the vital conditions that would build resilience in the face of adversity.

The Plan was also transpartisan: produced by over 150 career professionals, working through both Republican and Democratic administrations. It was initiated and completed under the first Trump Administration, then thoroughly vetted for public release under the Biden Administration.

As described in Health Affairs Forefront, the federal Plan did not introduce or create the vital conditions framework, the framework had already been gaining nationwide prominence for many years. When our federal interagency workgroup reached out to non-federal partners to help with the Plan by laying out the complementary role of civil society, we learned from so many of you who had been using the vital conditions to open different conversations and launch new multisector coalitions. You shared the framework and we applied it joyfully to our task—and it worked seamlessly.

Since the release of the Springboard in July 2020, and the ELTRR in November 2022, hundreds of organizations, communities, hospital systems, state and local governments, community foundations, faith communities and more have gravitated to the vital conditions and thriving together ethos. It is an undeniable social movement—one that began before the ELTRR and continues with momentum and fortitude regardless of the presence of a document on a website.

In my experience, everyone who contributed to or reviewed the Plan understood the role of government differently as a result. That can’t be erased. And I see that happen in community after community—this movement changes you if you let it. It cracks you open and offers a way to name past harms and heal together through shared values. To answer the questions, “what kind of ancestors will we be, and what future will we do our part to build?” The artifact of a plan has nothing to do with that, and we shouldn’t let the removal of it distract us.

The last Administration released the plan and some within it did truly remarkable work to keep the interagency workgroup alive and the implementation of the recommendations feasible. There were also many actions not taken and the full implementation of the ELTRR has yet to reach its full potential. We will continue to reach out and be available as a resource to colleagues in the federal government as the new Administration gets started. To the extent that there is a serious desire to think about how the government can better align resources to support the needs of communities, I will continue to promote the benefits and strengths of the vital conditions as an instructive framework for doing so. There is a reason we selected it as the organizing framework in 2020, and I am committed to reminding the returning Administration of its past leadership in supporting the ELTRR then, and what it might offer them—and all of us—now. 

Regardless of what happens to the federal actions, we as committed stewards must remember: we collectively own the fate of this movement. By their nature movements defy central orchestration. The Rippel Foundation will continue to support you for the long haul because a future where we all thrive together, with no exceptions, is our north star—and this is generational work. The promise of thriving together belongs to all of us.