Mobilizing anchor institutions to promote community health and wellbeing is gaining prominence as an approach to systems change. Anchors are often conceptualized as large, locally rooted, nonprofits that leverage their resources for local benefit. However, existing literature underemphasizes 2 opportunities to enhance the systemic impact of anchoring activity: (1) coordinated action by anchoring networks that include diverse, multi-level stakeholders-a hallmark of health promotion and (2) the potential contributions of the business sector to anchoring networks. Our perspective describes the significance of both for amplifying anchoring impact and identifies critical questions for enabling action.
Keywords: Population health; anchor institutions; community; cross-sectoral networks; health equity; health promoting community design; qualitative research.