A New Path for Philanthropy: Supporting Oral Health Through Community Partnerships
Good nutrition is essential to good oral as well as overall health. A community-based organization in central Washington state called APOYO shares this belief with Arcora Foundation. Beyond food and nutrition services, the organization has long supported immigrant and Latinx families with culturally relevant outreach, advocacy, and resource navigation. But during the summer of 2025, their ability to support communities was in jeopardy.
Welcoming and Belonging: Drivers for Equity and Growth
More than a decade ago, leadership at REACH Healthcare Foundation began exploring how a community would function if it truly embraced welcoming and belonging for immigrant and refugee populations. The mid-sized Midwest philanthropic foundation sought to invest in a plan to reveal, then address, the systemic barriers impacting Kansas City’s efforts of inclusion for all members of the community.
Healing Takes Practice: Reaching People Is Only the Beginning
Violence is increasingly understood as a public health problem. That shift has changed the way communities respond—moving the conversation beyond policing and criminal justice and toward prevention, intervention, and the conditions that put people at risk. But treating violence as a health problem also requires us to reckon with trauma.
We Didn’t Stop: Leading with Purpose When the System Stepped Back
The notice came the way these things now tend to come: abruptly, in writing, and without a transition plan. In April 2025, Public Health AmeriCorps programs were terminated nationally alongside about 900 other AmeriCorps programs. Funding halted. AmeriCorps service members who had built their careers and households around a year of community health service were left waiting for answers no one could give them. Organizations across the country scrambled.
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.
GIH Joins Amicus Brief Opposing New Citizenship Verification Requirements
GIH joined organizations filing an amicus brief for the case brought by NY and other states seeking to stop the administration’s attempt to expand citizenship verification requirements under the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 for programs administered by the Departments of Health and Human Services, Agriculture, Education, Housing and Urban Development, Labor, and Justice.
Remembering Patricia Mathews, Founding President and CEO of Northern Virginia Health Foundation
Grantmakers In Health (GIH) is saddened to learn of the recent passing of Patricia Mathews, a longtime fixture in health philanthropy and a former member of the GIH board of directors. Please join us in celebrating Patricia Mathews’ memory, as well as her many contributions to the field of health philanthropy and GIH.
Responsible Exits: Insights from Three Funders
Grantmakers In Health’s Maya Schane spoke with Stephanie Teleki of The California Health Care Foundation, Laila Bell of The Skillman Foundation, and Jaime Vazquez of The Pew Charitable Trusts about their recently published article in The Foundation Review, “When Shift Happens: Navigating Toward a Framework for Responsible Philanthropic Exits.”
The Keys to Successful Collaboration Between a State-based Health Foundation and a National Funder Collaborative
Discussions about firearms in the US are often focused on urban gun violence and mass shootings. But firearm injury and death is a public health crisis that touches every community—urban and rural, red states and blue—and it intersects with issues many health funders care about: mental health, suicide prevention, and health equity.
What We Heard When We Asked—and Why It Matters for Health Philanthropy Now
Over the past year, volatility and uncertainty have become defining features of the nonprofit landscape. Federal and state policy shifts, the cancelation of critical federal funding, delayed reimbursements, the unwinding of pandemic-era supports, and rising operating costs are converging. For many nonprofits, these pressures are no longer episodic; they shape everyday decisions about staffing, services, and sustainability.
