JA-Rocky Mountain and Delta Dental of Colorado, Intermountain Health, and Select Health have announced a three-year collaboration. The three nonprofit healthcare organizations will become the official sponsor of the healthcare store at Robert & Judi Newman JA Finance Park, presented by Transamerica, providing $150,000 of funding over the next three years to support the JA Finance Park program.
To celebrate this collaboration, local Delta Dental of Colorado, Intermountain Health, and Select Health representatives gathered with JA staff and held a ribbon-cutting ceremony to officially open the healthcare store at JA Finance Park in Greenwood Village, located in the JA Free Enterprise Center. Students from Vista PEAK Exploratory School in Aurora were the first to experience the new store, which gives program participants a holistic view of healthcare and provides an understanding of what health insurance is.
“We are excited for this collaboration; this is such beneficial information for young people to learn,” said Kristi Shaffer, Chief Development Officer for JA-Rocky Mountain. “This store will give them an understanding of how they can make good decisions on their healthcare. It won’t only have a positive impact on their health, but also their finances.”
JA Finance Park is JA’s premier financial literacy experiential learning program for middle and high school students, helping them build a foundation for making intelligent and lifelong personal financial decisions. JA’s programs are offered at no cost to schools.
JA Finance Park has been recognized by Harvard University’s Global Education Innovation Initiative as a program with innovative curriculum and best practices related to 21st century skills in financial literacy education. The program fulfills Colorado’s mandatory requirement that all high school students must complete a financial literacy course before graduation, which was signed into law in 2025 by Colorado Governor Jared Polis through HB 25-1192.
Students who participate in the JA Finance Park simulation become adults for the day and are immersed in a reality-based decision-making process addressing aspects of individual family budgeting, including housing, transportation, food, utilities, healthcare, investments, philanthropy, and banking. Following participation, 90% of students are more confident about creating a realistic budget, and 87% of students feel they have more control over how their future will turn out, according to post-program surveys.
