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.
New Manual Provides Guidance on Civic Health
The Civic Health Alliance, a nonpartisan group of health and civic leaders, published The Civil Health Compact, a new manual for health care systems to advocate voter participation and other civic responsibilities to patients to advance community health outcomes.
RRF Foundation for Aging Releases Call to Action to Address Older Adult Debt Burden
In a new Call to Action, RRF Foundation for Aging illuminates a problem hidden for too long – older adult debt – and calls on advocates, researchers, service providers, funders and others to get involved with addressing this urgent issue.
Committing to the Long Game of Advancing Better Health Through Public Policy
As people across the country prepare to vote in state and local elections, those of us working in health philanthropy should take a moment to reflect on what we can do to support policies to advance better health outcomes.
Promoting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the Health Care Workforce
The Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation is the only national foundation solely dedicated to improving the public’s health by advancing change in the education of health professionals. The Foundation’s current focus is the clinical learning environment where the health care workforce both acquires skills and delivers care.
The Gilead Foundation: Advancing Health Equity Through Education Equity in the U.S.
While the COVID pandemic and most recent racial reckoning galvanized the traditional health philanthropy community, many corporate funders made their first foray into supporting racial and social justice efforts as well as health equity. Corporate social responsibility efforts were, and continue to be, scrutinized as merely cosmetic public relations efforts with no real long-term, institutional commitments to driving meaningful change in Black and Brown communities that have long been historically, intentionally marginalized.
Health Philanthropy’s Equity Blind Spot: Syringe Services Programs
Syringe services programs (SSPs) have existed, mostly under the radar, in the United States since the early days of the response to the HIV epidemic. Illegal then, and still illegal in many jurisdictions across the country today, sterile syringe access is a bedrock of harm reduction.