Beyond the Rankings: What Four Decades of KIDS COUNT Have Taught Me About Why Data Matter
For more than three decades, through the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s KIDS COUNT® project, decisionmakers and communities have had access to reliable national, state, and local data to improve outcomes for all children, young people, and families in this country. KIDS COUNT comprises the foundation’s national KIDS COUNT publications—the annual KIDS COUNT Data Book and periodic reports such as Race for Results; the KIDS COUNT Data Center, a resource for year-round national, state, and local data; and the KIDS COUNT Network of state-based partner organizations that help policymakers, advocates, journalists, and community leaders understand and use data to make informed decisions.
Opioid Use Disorder in Pregnancy: Countering Bias and Promoting Care
Most pregnancy-related deaths in North Carolina are preventable. Yet mental health conditions, including overdose and suicide, remain the leading cause of pregnancy-related death. For health care leaders, that reality demands a closer look at how we identify, treat, and support pregnant and postpartum patients with opioid use disorder.
Preventing Domestic Violence by Reaching People Who Cause Harm
The research involved a landscape scan of Cook County, Illinois’ policies, funding, and services for people who cause harm with a goal of engaging the stakeholders and providers doing this work as well as survivors and those who receive services to identify barriers, challenges, and strengths of domestic violence prevention programs. The research examined Partner Abuse Intervention Programs (PAIP) in particular, a standard intervention for people who cause harm that is overseen by the Illinois Department of Human Services.
Post-Overdose Response Teams: A Community-Based Approach to Public Safety
Recent changes in the federal policy landscape have created new questions for communities working to address substance use disorder (SUD), mental health needs, and housing instability. In this evolving environment, philanthropy, in collaboration with community-based organizations and local governments, has an important role to play in supporting evidence-based responses to overdose and mental health emergencies that improve access to care, strengthen community wellbeing, and uplift public health while avoiding unnecessary criminal legal outcomes.
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.
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.
Foundation for Opioid Response Efforts
The opioid crisis is a wide-ranging public health crisis that will require many different approaches and disciplines to effect real change. It will require bringing together and highlighting the intersections of physical and mental health, social determinants of health, and long-standing policies including those on criminal justice and access to treatment. To that end, many health funders can find a role to play that contributes to reducing mortality and increasing well-being, even if they do not consider themselves opioid use disorder funders.
