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
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 Announces New Board Members
Aranthan Jones II and Laura Landy have been elected to the GIH board of directors. Their terms begin in April 2018.
It Is Time to Place an Explicit Focus on Agency
There is a risk that initiatives resulting from the health sector’s growing enthusiasm for influencing social determinants will be too limited to meet the mark because they leave out the knowledge and power of those most affected by the very challenges they intend to address.
Three Ways Foundations Can Navigate Changing Political Tides
In today’s turbulent climate, when shifting political winds and policy changes go hand-in-hand with ever-expanding health care needs across the country, how can health funders be strategically effective?
Measuring Health Outcomes: Philanthropy as Catalyst
As projects and cross-sector partnerships that integrate affordable housing, community development, and health begin to scale, documenting the associated health outcomes is essential to gain an understanding of how these efforts address the key social determinants of health and to build the body of evidence needed to tailor interventions in communities.
Understanding Community Engagement: An Outsider-Turned-Insider’s Perspective of Philanthropy
Community engagement has become a somewhat ubiquitous term within the social sector, which often oversimplifies a deep and complex process.
Grantmakers and the Health Care Workforce
Recently, I’ve written about issues that are top of mind with current and past GIH board members. My series concludes with a look at the health care workforce, a pressing and complex issue that encompasses aspects of quality, equity, and delivery system reform.