A few weeks ago, we stood together in Newark’s South Ward to break ground on a $48 million wellness center — a project that will bring primary care, maternity services, a federally qualified health center, a YMCA, and a pharmacy together under one roof in a community that has waited generations for exactly this type of investment.
Shovels in the dirt are a small gesture. What they represent is not.
For more than a decade, the City of Newark and RWJBarnabas Health have been writing a different kind of story about what happens when a city government and an anchor health system stop operating on parallel tracks and start building with the same blueprint.
That story cannot be told in press releases. It is measured in real outcomes in neighborhoods across the Brick City.
The results are clear. At Hope Village, the city’s bridge-housing community on Elizabeth Avenue, chronically homeless Newarkers are connected to furnished apartments, internet access, mental health services, and a dedicated community health worker through the city’s partnership with RWJBarnabas Health.
Through sustained City-led strategies, Newark has cut homelessness by more than half in recent years — an outcome that drew international attention, and one that no city achieves alone. At Newark Penn Station, our Gateway to Hope initiative deploys three-person medical and social work teams to meet unhoused residents where they are.
Consider food. In May, we will open the doors of Harvest — a first-of-its-kind farm-to-community center — with the Urban Agriculture Cooperative, local producers, and state partners. Harvest is not a food pantry. It is an economic engine that treats food insecurity as what it is: a societal condition with a zip code.
RWJBarnabas Health is embedding SNAP navigators and community health workers in every one of its 12 hospitals, because a prescription for insulin means very little if there is no food in the refrigerator.
Consider our children. In Newark Public Schools, a three-year partnership with Brigaid has placed seven executive chefs inside district kitchens to cook more scratch-made meals and train the cafeteria teams who feed the district’s more than 41,000 students.
Last week, RWJBarnabas Health stood with Essex County Executive Joseph N. DiVincenzo, Jr. to open a new pediatric mobile health clinic — a van that delivers vaccines, school physicals, and screenings to children in Newark and across the county whose families lack the ability to get to a doctor’s office.
And at East Side High School in the Ironbound, a full-service clinic operated by Saint James Health and RWJBarnabas Health sits right inside the building, so a missed appointment is no longer a function of a missed bus.
Through the state’s Hospital Partnership Subsidy Program, we also helped create dozens of affordable apartments within walking distance of Newark Beth Israel Medical Center — because a hospital bed is a poor substitute for a home.
And our community health initiatives have been strengthened by the strategic investment of state appropriations and the visionary leadership of Senator Teresa Ruiz and Assembly Budget Committee Chair Eliana Pintor Marin.
These leaders understand that none of this is charity. It is strategy.
A 2025 report from the Pew Charitable Trusts noted that every dollarinvested in public health returns roughly $14 in savings in medical and other costs. That’s an amazing return on investment.
For every dollar invested in food security, we see a 300% return to local economies and New Jersey farmers. For every dollar we invest in community health we see a return to the taxpayer of five to six times. We are already seeing the rates of families not making their doctor appointments drop significantly, while also reducing return visits to the Emergency Department.
Hospitals are among the largest employers, purchasers, and landholders in the cities they serve. Cities are the governments closest to the people.
When we align our capital, our workforce planning, our real estate, and our data, we can move upstream of illness in ways no clinic visit ever will. When we don’t, we pay for it in emergency rooms, and with lives.
The lesson we want other cities and health systems to take from Newark is that we are not unique. It is that we are intentional. We meet regularly. We share data. We co-invest. We trust each other enough to disagree in private and stand together in public. We let residents set the agenda, as the South Ward did when they told us what they needed a wellness center to be. And we make sure state and federal dollars are met with local execution because funding without implementation isjust an empty promise.
Newark has spent the last decade proving that a city once written off can lead. A six-decade low in crime. Twenty-three thousand lead service lines replaced. Homelessness moving sharply in the right direction. These outcomes are the product of partnership — not luck.
There is more work to do. Maternal health outcomes in our city are still woefully inadequate. Too many of our neighbors face housing insecurity and barriers to homeownership. Workforce shortages strain every hospital in New Jersey.
But we are not starting from zero. We are starting from a foundation we built together — and we are going to keep building.
Because a healthier Newark is not a slogan. It is a work in progress. And the work is far from done.
Ras J. Baraka is the Mayor of Newark. George Helmy is Executive Vice President and Chief Corporate Affairs Officer at RWJBarnabas Health.
