The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation established the Urban Health Initiative (UHI) in 1995 as a ten-year effort to improve the health and safety of young people across an entire city or metropolitan area (defined as "going to scale"). To achieve that goal, it is believed that each local effort must embody the following values:

• Local campaigns must focus on major threats to children's health and safety.
  
  
• The ability to engage the community, formulate a vision and develop and carry out strategic efforts is related more to the ability, experience and involvement of leadership than nearly all other factors.
  
  
• A successful collaborative requires that those involved determine collectively what needs to be done and commit resources to support the strategies and activities of the plan, regardless of who may control those resources in the future.
  
  
• Campaigns must use a data-driven process to inform decisions about where and how to focus their efforts, and employ the most effective strategies.
  
  
• Campaigns must change systems in order to reach scale. UHI campaigns are change agents, not service providers or funders. UHI campaigns help to bring about the change needed to strategically alter systems, including resource streams.
  
  
• Regional cooperation and strategies that cross political boundaries are encouraged.
  
  
• A sophisticated communications campaign is key to increasing the prominence of youth health and safety issues, and creating and sustaining momentum for change.
  
  
• Campaigns should leverage additional resources needed to implement systems change strategies and to achieve their goals.
  
  
• Campaigns are encouraged to develop meaningful roles for youth and families in the implementation of strategies.