Health and Well-Being Threatened in The First 100 Days
Statement from GIH President and CEO Cara V. James on First 100 Days
Power to the People: Advancing Impact Through Participatory Budgeting
Who is best positioned to determine how health funding should be allocated? At the Community Health Commission of Missouri (CHCM), we believe the answer is clear: the people most affected by health disparities.
Philanthropy, Stewarding a Just America
In a time of intensive action to dismantle policies and practices that protect the well-being of all Americans, where chaos is the principal strategy to overthrow the will of and care for the American people, philanthropy must remain rooted in what is legally and morally right.
GIH in Nonprofit Quarterly: Health Funders Call on Philanthropy to Support Power Building
The 2022 Grantmakers In Health (GIH) annual conference was the subject of a September 19, 2022 Nonprofit Quarterly article exploring health philanthropy’s changing approach to community engagement, as well as the role of health conversion foundations in the field.
Cara V. James Interviewed on TED Health Podcast: Advancing Public Health
Grantmakers In Health President and CEO Cara V. James was interviewed by Shoshana Ungerleider on the September 21, 2022 episode of the TED Health podcast about challenges faced by the U.S. public health system.
Strengthening Social Connection and Opportunities in Rural Communities
This brief describes an unfolding learning journey intended to strengthen social connection, resident voice, and agency to address inequities in rural health and well-being. Along the way, we have come to realize the important lessons for each of our institutions and ways in which we are better off for having taken this approach to our work.
Rhode Island’s Health Equity Zones: Rethinking Community Investing to Create Measurable, Sustainable Gains in Health Equity
In 2015 the Rhode Island Department of Health (RIDOH) launched a project called the Health Equity Zones (HEZ) initiative, with the goal of creating a new public health approach. Rather than prioritizing specific health outcomes, Rhode Island’s HEZ initiative was designed to shift investments upstream to improve the social, environmental, and economic determinants of health by intentionally investing in community infrastructure and resident empowerment. The HEZ initiative has grown over the past seven years to become an internationally recognized model for operationalizing health equity, and during that time we have learned a lot about the role of community investments and how our approach needs to be rethought if we are truly going to invest in health equity.
Centering Racial Justice to Address Climate Change: Learning What it Takes
In 2018, the Kresge Foundation launched the Climate Change, Health, and Equity (CCHE) initiative as a 5-year, $22 million commitment to accelerate action on climate change and climate-related inequities in health. Since its inception, the CCHE network has worked in distinct, yet aligned strategies that focus on health institutions, practitioner and professional societies, and community-based organizations. The priority was to bring together diverse grant-funded partners at different points along their equity journey, with initiative partners providing evaluation, technical assistance, and support to sustain the network.
Children’s Environmental Health Day: Actions Needed Now to Protect Our Children’s Health
It has been over a decade since the World Health Organization raised the alarm that chronic diseases—including cardiovascular, cancer, diabetes, obesity, and metabolic syndrome—are rapidly becoming an epidemic in developed nations, and increasingly, in developing nations. Escalating rates of neurocognitive, metabolic, autoimmune, and cardiovascular diseases cannot be solely attributed to lifestyle, genetics, and nutrition. Prenatal, early life, and ongoing exposures, along with bio-accumulative toxicants, are playing a large role in the increased incidence of chronic disease. In fact, we need only look at the statistics to see that chronic disease rates in children are on the rise, and this can often be linked to toxic exposures.