Ackley shares lessons, inspiration for equitable community development nationwide

By Margo Boone ’26  

In a new piece highlighting work from the national Invest Health Initiative, Professor Liz Ackley shared reflections and takeaways from her involvement in Roanoke city’s efforts to improve health and access to health-promoting resources across Roanoke’s diverse neighborhoods.  

READ MORE: Making the Spaghetti Stick: Lessons Learned through Efforts to Advance Health Equity in Roanoke, Virginia  

Ackley, founder and director of the Center for Community Health Innovation at Roanoke College, led teams of citizens and cross-sector partners through years-long efforts to improve city policies, investment strategies and local infrastructure to advance community health equity.  

One outcome of this work is Melrose Plaza, a game-changing project that just broke ground last fall and will provide a full-service grocery store as well as financial, wellness and education services to residents of the Melrose-Orange neighborhood.  

The project, now led by Goodwill Industries of the Valleys, is the culmination of years of planning, advocacy and collaboration across a wide network of community partners involved in the national Invest Health cohort initiative, supported by Reinvestment Fund and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.  

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RELATED: Goodwill Industries of the Valleys holds groundbreaking for Melrose Plaza

In her spotlight for Invest Health, Ackley reflected on the project’s complex seven-year history. Project ideas often start out as tidy roadmaps with clearly defined signposts and timelines, she wrote. But once on the ground, you realize your plans never follow a linear route.  

“In reality, our experience bared closer resemblance to a strand of cooked spaghetti flung against the wall to check for 'doneness,’” wrote Ackley, who is also Roanoke College’s Brian H. Thornhill Professor of Health and Human Performance.   

“Like a noodle full of twists-and-turns, despite a clear end goal, our community development pipeline was anything but predictable. As we celebrate the recent groundbreaking of a resource hub in the Melrose-Orange neighborhood of Roanoke, Virginia, we recognize the value of remaining committed to Invest Health’s core principals while throwing the proverbial roadmap out the window.”  

Invest Health is an initiative of Reinvestment Fund and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation designed to help cities define community needs and pursue solutions though policies, investment capital and other resources that can be leveraged to improve public health.  

Ackley was invited to share how Invest Health’s core principles helped guide Roanoke’s strategies to advance health equity in the face of unexpected challenges to strengthen equity-promoting community projects in mid-sized cities across the country.