The Glenda Sneed Foundation was created…

to support young adults from working class backgrounds who want to pursue the promotion of good health and healthy environments in vulnerable communities as a career and a cause; to identify intellectually talented and community-spirited young adults from such neighborhoods and get them on a pathway for leadership in the fields of community and/or environmental health.

Ideally, beneficiaries of awards from the Glenda Sneed Foundation will embody the intellectual talent and the selfless character to excel in the areas of community and environmental health, but they will likely have grown up unware of their latent interest, talent, and selfless character.  The foundation will succeed by identifying such under-resourced young adults and capacitating them for educational and career success to subsequently help capacitate vulnerable communities for better health outcomes and healthier environments. 

Through the Glenda Sneed Foundation’s activities and awards, there will be more community health leaders who are products of communities that need such leaders the most.  Many young adults will experience an awakening for the first time in their lives that there is a clear pathway for them to have impactful and satisfying careers associated with adding value to other people’s lives with the support provided by Glenda Sneed Foundation.

Our Purpose

Working-class and other vulnerable communities are home to many able young adults who either lived most of their young lives not appreciating their intellectual talents, was unsure how to mobilize those talents, didn’t have the financial means to pursue advanced knowledge and credentials, or some combination of these possibilities.  Communities to be served by the Glenda Sneed Foundation are those that have high mortality and morbidity rates and disproportionate shares of environmental stressors.  The impetus of the foundation is to identify intellectually talented and community-spirited young adults from such neighborhoods and get them on a pathway to become leaders in community and environmental health.

While there are many universities and organizations seeking to produce more community and environmental health professionals, there is such a chronic shortage of such professionals in general and such an acute shortage in under-resourced neighborhoods until there is plenty of room for the new Glenda Sneed Foundation and other new organizations to help fulfill the gargantuan needs in vulnerable communities.