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.
Incarceration and Public Health: Going Bold to Achieve Health Equity
Two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, the field of public health has sprinted a marathon to address the ongoing crisis — we have implemented mass vaccination plans, pushed back against misinformation campaigns, and taken action in the face of slashed budgets and outright assaults on our lives. But as a public health researcher and advocate, I believe there is a critical place where we have fallen short, and with dire consequences: connecting the dots between incarceration and health.
Investing in Nutrition Security Post-Pandemic
During the first year of the pandemic, despite being a rural agricultural region with over 4,000 small farms, the food insecurity rate across the North Country counties of New York rose from 11 to 15 percent. In March 2020, with funding from New York State Health Foundation (NYSHealth), the Adirondack Foundation, and the Cloudsplitter Foundation, AdkAction partnered with the Hub on the Hill, a nonprofit food hub, to launch its Emergency Food Packages (EFP) project to assist local families facing food insecurity due to the COVID-19 pandemic. EFP succeeded in delivering thousands of healthy, locally produced food packages to people in need while also supporting hard working farmers across the region.
On the Precipice: Why Health Funders Should Care about Abortion Access
Reproductive health and justice in the United States are at a crossroads. We are seeing positive developments such as growing (though still inadequate) attention to maternal health and reinstatement of the family planning safety net after years of reductions in access to these services. We invite funders focused on health more broadly to join us in an effort to support the dignity of women and families; protect women’s lives; and mitigate the health, economic, and social harms that can result from being denied an abortion.
MetroWest Health Foundation’s Adolescent Health Survey
The MetroWest Health Foundation recently released the results from its 2021 MetroWest Adolescent Health Survey, a biennial survey of middle and high school students in the 25-region served by the foundation. Survey findings found that rates of vaping and marijuana use have declined but mental health issues and cyberbullying have increased.
Advocacy That Builds Power
The California Endowment supported the Center for Evaluation Innovation and Gigi Barsoum to examine what it takes for advocacy to build power through an evaluation of advocacy efforts that were part of the 10-year Building Healthy Communities initiative.
