Healthier Information Ecosystems: Strategies for Health Philanthropy
Our information environment is transforming—including the places and people who help us make decisions about our health. Those health information ecosystems are fragmented; filled with information from a wide range of expertise and sources; and platform algorithms exert tremendous and unseen control over what messages are seen, shared, and amplified. These changes have many of our traditional health information sources racing to learn new skills to ensure they remain trusted and relevant.
Beyond Innovation: How Philanthropy Can Strengthen Systems to Improve Rural Health Outcomes
Sometimes innovation in philanthropy is associated with breakthrough technologies or new medical discoveries. But some of the most impactful investments fund something less visible: the coordination of people, protocols, and institutions already in place so they work together seamlessly to save lives.
A Philanthropic Tree of Life: Seeding Health Equity through Influence and Innovation
Philanthropy can function as a living ecosystem for change rooted in equity, nourished by trust, and bearing the fruits of community well-being. The Direct Relief Fund for Health Equity (DRFHE), launched with $50 million in initial investments, exemplifies a transformative philanthropic model supporting nearly 200 community-based organizations across the United States. Acknowledging DRFHE as a “Tree of Life” offers a framework grounded in community-led, trust-based, and unrestricted giving that challenges traditional philanthropic paradigms. Therefore, this article describes the fund’s origins, strategic priorities, and outcomes, and introduces the DRFHE Tree of Life framework as a replicable model for equity-driven philanthropy.
GIH Health Policy Update Newsletter
The Latest
An Exclusive Resource for Funding Partners
The Health Policy Update is a newsletter produced in collaboration with Leavitt Partners and Trust for America’s Health. Drawing on GIH’s policy priorities outlined in our policy agenda and our strategic objective of increasing our policy and advocacy presence, the Health Policy Update provides GIH Funding Partners with a range of federal health policy news.
Weaving DEI Into a Foundation’s Everyday Work
At The Colorado Health Foundation, we are relentlessly committed to advancing health equity and believe it exists when there are no avoidable, unfair or systemically-caused differences in health status. To live into this, we have implemented principles of diversity, equity and inclusion into our vision and cornerstones, and our daily operations. While we are not experts, we can offer a glimpse of what some of this experimentation looks like in practice in our grantmaking, evaluation, and communications functions.
Supporting Clinics to Serve as Community Hubs for Health in Central Texas
In Texas, the lack of access to health care, coupled with inadequate and under-resourced systems, has had a profoundly negative impact on communities of color and underserved areas. COVID-19 has laid bare the severity of these issues even more so. These factors, and our commitment to achieving health equity, have informed the St. David’s Foundation’s primary care safety net strategy.
Philanthropy Uniquely Positioned to Address Innovations in Safety Net Health
Health Forward Foundation is celebrating 15 years of grantmaking. In this time, the foundation has anchored access to safety net health care for those most in need in the Kansas City region. Along the way, we have learned valuable lessons about maximizing our investments through innovations and partnerships to benefit those most in need.
Maximizing Impact in a Limited Time: Time-Limited Programs and Foundations
Some foundations institute time-limited initiatives to maximize resources. Others adopt a spend-down approach to have impact within a short organizational lifespan. Both situations provide opportunity for a health-focused foundation to accomplish goals with urgency, but pose the challenge of doing so without the luxury of time. ClearWay Minnesota and Missouri Foundation for Health have embraced strategic and tactical advantages of being life-limited and having time-limited programs, respectively, to address persistent health issues.
Growing Local Philanthropy to Improve Health
Community foundations are often in the best position to bring partners together, across sectors and geographies, and to tackle the complex set of issues facing their residents. They represent a network that can serve as a powerful force, including to improve health outcomes. Recognizing this, Kansas Health Foundation launched the Giving Resources to Our World Initiative with the goal of strengthening local philanthropy in communities across Kansas.
