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.
Increasing Access to Oral Health Care in Missouri: One Funder’s Approach
The Missouri Foundation for Health began to address better access to oral health care for their region in 2013 by expanding the capacity and infrastructure of the state’s oral health system. The success of their initiative is a result of the development of partnerships and eliciting community input, and is an ideal model for foundations in other areas.
2016 Terrance Keenan Institute for Emerging Leaders in Health Philanthropy
Grantmakers In Health seeks exceptional grantmakers to participate in the 2016 Terrance Keenan Institute for Emerging Leaders in Health Philanthropy. The Call for Nominations deadline is May 31.
Remembering Leila May Polintan (Bugno)
GIH Board and staff mourn the death of Leila Polintan, our communications director. Leila’s courage and grace in the face of her battle with cancer were an example for all of us. We will miss her smiling face, infectious laugh, and vibrant spirit.
Adaptive Leadership: The Next Requirement for Sustainable Community Health Improvements?
Funders have an obligation to go beyond providing programmatic or operational funding. They must play a larger role if they are to contribute to meaningful and sustained change and responsibly steward the resources in their trust.
A Healthy Public Needs More Than Public Health: Lessons for Addressing Substance Use
The longstanding invisibility of substance use disorders simply cannot continue if we truly want to improve communities. We have a window of opportunity to make great strides if physical and behavioral health policymakers, advocates, and foundations work together.
In Memory of Andy Hyman
The field of health philanthropy lost one of its greatest champions when Andy Hyman of Robert Wood Johnson Foundation passed away on February 25, 2015.