About The Highland Neighborhood Association

The vision of the Highland Neighborhood Association is to create a neighborhood that is the healthiest in Gaston County, that strives for health equity, safe neighborhoods and preserves the rich history and culture of the Highland Community. 

 During the Spring of 2016, residents and those who had a vested interest in the Highland Community began meeting regularly to discuss the health challenges and opportunities for positive change in Highland.
In 2018, the Highland neighbors formed the Highland Neighborhood Association (HNA) a 501c3 non-profit organization. HNA engage neighbors and community partners in studying and discussing the upstream causes of poor health and working on solutions to address these causes. HNA has worked intensively with community partners to improve health in Highland since 2016. HNA is committed to reducing health disparities in their neighborhood, identifying, racism, lack of economic opportunities, lack of education and income, no access to healthy food, and neighborhood infrastructure that is not conducive to leading active lifestyles as upstream causes of poor health.
Since it’s inception HNA has worked with many partners on solutions to improve the health of the Highland Community. These partners include: Kintegra Health, Blue Cross Blue Shield North Carolina Foundation, City of Gastonia, Keep Gastonia Beautiful, Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, BUILD Health Challenge, CaroMont Health, Gaston County Department of Public Health, Gaston County Cooperative Extension, Third Street Presbyterian Church, and NourishedRX.
As a result of these partnerships HNA successfully created the Healthy Highland Enterprise which encompasses: The Highland Youth Garden, The Highland Cultivators, RAMS Kitchen, RAMS Mobile Food Unit, Food Is Medicine Meal Prescription Program, Food is Medicine Meal Delivery Program.