What Do We Stand For?
One year ago, as we were just one month into the new administration, I wrote that “At a moment when so much has been described as ‘unprecedented,’ and so much of what we value is being attacked, we need to ask ourselves as individuals, organizations, and a field, what do we stand for? What values do we hold, and what will we do and say to defend them?” Today, the answers to these questions are needed more urgently than ever.
Medicaid and Community Violence: Pathways to Sustainable Care
American cities are witnessing historic declines in gun violence. In recent years, cities like Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Chicago have all seen precipitous drops in homicides, with some reaching multi-decade record lows (Washington Post 2025). While there are many causes of this decline, experts in the field point to community violence intervention as driving the trend.
Reimagining Rural Health and Well-being
To inform positive change, Grantmakers in Health (GIH) and the National Rural Health Association (NRHA) are partnering to reimagine a unified vision for health and well-being in rural America. The Georgia Health Policy Center (GHPC) was engaged to conduct a landscape analysis and facilitate listening sessions with rural health stakeholders at the local, state, and national levels.
GIH Health Policy Update Newsletter
An Exclusive Resource for Funding Partners
The Health Policy Update is a newsletter produced in collaboration with Leavitt Partnersi 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.
Honoring and Resourcing Native Communities to Lead the Climate Fight
The Climate and Clean Energy Equity Fund recently released Honoring and Resourcing Native Communities to Lead the Climate Fight: A Call to Action for Philanthropy report and accompanying blog post. While Indigenous Peoples are on the frontlines of climate change, they face significant barriers to philanthropic support.
Oral Health Care: What Are Funders Supporting?
A recent edition of Health Affairs’ “GrantWatch” blog outlined key oral health policy issues and provided an update on recent foundation grants in oral health. Several GIH Funding Partners are featured.
Oral Health in America: Advances and Challenges
A new report from the National Institutes of Health provides a road map on how to improve the nation’s oral health. Released by NIH’s National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR), the report emphasizes the importance of oral health, and challenges to the creation of more equitable access to oral health services. Potential roles for health philanthropy are highlighted including grantmaking and policy engagement regarding insurance access, community health education, and school-based dental services.
AHRQ Releases Annual Update on U.S. Healthcare Quality, Disparities
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality has released its National Healthcare Quality and Disparities Report, which details the state of healthcare quality and disparities in the United States. The report identifies improvements in HIV and colon cancer care, nursing home care, and medication prescribing to older adults. The report also indicates that more work needs to be done to address disparities in important areas. Among the findings, dental and oral health care services have not substantially improved, particularly for people with low income or who live in rural areas.
Reimagining A Quality Information System For US Health Care
Recommendations include: a national data infrastructure that operates independent of practice setting; aligned multipayer incentives that support needed infrastructure investments; longitudinal patient-reported outcome measures captured both in-clinic and through mobile technologies; a series of robust regional demonstration projects to broaden stakeholder understanding and technical capability; and a governance mechanism that assures both simplification and alignment of methods.
How does cost affect access to care?
In this chart collection, authors from the Peterson-Kaiser Family Foundation Health System Tracker explore trends in how costs affect access to care in the U.S. based on the National Health Interview Survey data through 2020. Health spending per person in the U.S. averaged almost $12,000 in 2020, nearly double the average in other large high-income countries.