A Community Effort Years in the Making

Spartanburg has a long history of bringing people together to improve health and quality of life. For decades, residents, organizations, and community leaders have worked collaboratively to understand local challenges, share ideas, and build solutions that support healthier communities.

Much of that work took shape through two major collaborative efforts — The Road to Better Health and Spartanburg’s Way to Wellville — which brought together partners across healthcare, local government, education, and community organizations to focus on improving health outcomes across the county.

In 2020, those efforts came together under one unified initiative: Live Healthy Spartanburg. Supported by leadership funding from the Mary Black Foundation and Spartanburg Regional Healthcare System, the collaborative builds on more than two decades of partnership and progress while creating a clearer, more coordinated path forward.

Today, Live Healthy Spartanburg continues that community-driven approach, bringing together organizations such as the City of Spartanburg, the South Carolina Department of Public Health, United Way of the Piedmont, ReGenesis Health Care, the Edward Via College of Osteopathic Medicine, and many others. Together, these partners are working to identify priorities, align resources, and improve health outcomes for people across Spartanburg County.

The timeline below highlights some of the milestones that helped shape this work and the partnerships that continue to move it forward.

  • 1987

    John Wardlaw and the Spartanburg County Foundation Trustees articulate a vision to measure the quality of life in Spartanburg, and a team of volunteers gather data to produce the first Critical Indicators Report. The report was centered in five broad areas: education, family, economics, health, and crime.

    The report informs and justifies the development of a number of collaborative partnerships to begin to address them.

    This work continues today under Strategic Spartanburg.

  • 2008

    After years of study and research, capacity building, planning, and “early-in” projects, the Road To Better Health is established by a consortium of community leaders and organizations. Its goal: identify priority areas and further focus efforts to more effectively rally support and pool resources to improve health outcomes in Spartanburg County. 

  • 2015

    Spartanburg County wins the prestigious Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) Culture of Health Prize for its collaborative, cross-sector approach to improving community health. Through the Road to Better Health coalition, the county was able to address social determinants of health, significantly reduce teen pregnancy rates, begin to address childhood obesity, and significantly increase access to care for uninsured residents. 

  • 2015

    Seven years after the launch of the Road to Better Health, Spartanburg is selected as one of five communities nationwide to be a part of the Way to Wellville, a 5-year project to achieve equitable well-being. 

  • 2019

    The two initiatives partner with others to conduct a local Community Health Needs Assessment, the first report of its kind in Spartanburg County.

  • 2020

    Through dozens of surveys, feedback from focus groups and other interviews, a key takeaway emerges about community-wide confusion over the existence of two named collaborative efforts operating in roughly the same space. An extensive consultant-led process leads to a recommendation to fully align and unify the two partnerships into one organization, and Live Healthy Spartanburg is created.