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.
Medicaid Managed Care Contracts are a Powerful Tool for Change; Philanthropy has a Role to Play
As a foundation, the mission of the United Methodist Health Ministry Fund is to improve the health of all Kansans. Our success, in large measure, depends on investments we make in advancing positive policy and systems changes that affect the state and communities. So, with large numbers of the state’s most vulnerable people relying on Medicaid for health coverage and care, we focus on leveraging the opportunities this program offers to sustain improved health outcomes and make progress on health equity.
Investing in Inclusion: How Health Philanthropy Can Prioritize the Needs and Perspectives of Individuals with Disabilities
One in five children in the United States has a special health care need requiring more than routine health services, and one in four adults report having a disability. As 70 million adults and 14.5 million children in the United States have a disability, the population impacted by issues in the aging out process and in the health care system more broadly is far from insignificant. Despite these numbers, disability-related grants represent just 2 percent of total philanthropic giving and are primarily directed towards services and supports that seek to fix or cure disabilities and perpetuate the ableist assumption that people with disabilities are unable to make decisions about their own care.
Sustainability? No, It Is about Building Durability!
Philanthropy has forever espoused the term “sustainability.” We ask in grant applications and in our conversations with grant partners: “What’s your sustainability plan?” and “How do you plan to sustain your program once the grant ends?” Thanks to the influence of Tom Klaus, formerly of Tenacious Change, my thinking has shifted and evolved over the past few years to “durability.”
Merck Foundation: December 2024
Merck Foundation has launched a new initiative – the Collaborative for Equity in Cardiac Care to advance equitable access to high-quality, culturally responsive cardiac care for people living with heart conditions in underserved United States communities. The foundation is committing $17 million over five years to support the development and implementation of innovative, comprehensive programs for cardiac health care across the country as well as promote cross-sectoral collaborations to address barriers to care associated with social drivers of health.
The Pew Charitable Trusts: December 2024
In the Speak Up MO report, residents’ top responses identified several priorities for improving health, including expanding health care coverage or implementing universal health care, lowering health care costs, and addressing the cost of living.