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.
Building the Will, and the Way, to Advance Equity at the Maine Health Access Foundation
In 2016, the Maine Health Access Foundation (MeHAF) Board approved an extension of its strategic plan, as a bridge between the founding CEO and a new leader. Two issues were added to MeHAF’s work: equity, and the opiate epidemic. We had ideas about how to tackle the latter. We did not know where to start with the former.
Philanthropy @ Work – Transitions – April 2019
The latest on transitions from the field.
Supporting Health Care and Community-Based Organization Partnerships to Address Social Determinants of Health
Increasingly, health systems, providers, and payers recognize the significant influence that social factors such as housing, food insecurity, employment status, and transportation have on well-being and health care spending.
A Grantmaker Affinity Group Informs the Field, Inspires Innovation, and Ignites Action
Early and often, health funders are asked to fund oral health. It has become clear, however, that equally, if not more essential, are investments to eliminate the systemic inequities that concentrate disease in specific populations.
Trends in Health Philanthropy: Leveraging Policy Change
Over the years, GIH has developed considerable programming to help funders learn from one another about effective policy change strategies, to increase awareness of what is legally possible, and to decrease anxiety about emerging strategies.
RIZE Massachusetts: March 2019
RIZE Massachusetts (RIZE) released a report by the University of Massachusetts Medical School’s Commonwealth Medicine division on recovery coaches, a peer support professional used in treatment for individuals with opioid use disorder (OUD). The report was commissioned to study the effectiveness of recovery coaches, define and examine their role in treatment, and understand current payment methods.