Innovation in the Safety Net
This country’s safety net health system has always been a place of innovation. The safety net includes community health centers and public hospitals that serve the 100 million patients who either have Medicaid or lack health insurance entirely. With limited resources and patients with complex medical, social, and behavioral health needs, the safety net has long had to innovate out of necessity.
Health Equity: Our Way Forward …Through COVID-19 and Beyond
Eric Kelly, President, Quantum Foundation For health funders, it is essential that we realize that even given all of the unforeseen devastation of COVID-19, and the compounding social crises in its wake, many of our communities began 2020 already in a health crisis. These pre-existing conditions allowed a global pandemic that does not discriminate to…
Pioneering Health-Wealth Solutions for Children
Today, as we navigate the pandemic, deep racial and economic inequities in health and wealth outcomes have been revealed and amplified for children—especially children of color. Health and wealth are inextricably linked. Investments to improve health outcomes using the social determinants of health and to promote financial well-being across families are mutually supportive. The ultimate goal is to ensure that all children are healthy, financially secure, and live in families without daily financial stressors because of assets and wealth.
Can We Have It All? Balancing Key Factors in Evaluating a Grant Portfolio
Like many funding organizations, Methodist Healthcare Ministries of South Texas, Inc., has been on a journey to incorporate strategic evaluation into its grantmaking, and in 2019, completed an ambitious suite of impact evaluations. The evaluation had multiple aims, including: determining the portfolio’s impact; examining the impact of each intervention via program-level studies; and supporting grantees’ use of and capacity to engage in these and future evaluations.
Building an Equitable Future for Health and Well-Being
FORESIGHT is the name for a partnership of 17 philanthropies that is catalyzing a vision for the future of health and well-being centered on two things: the game-changing trends, challenges, and opportunities on the horizon; and the aspirations of a diversity of communities throughout the U.S.
20 Years of Progress – Two Tobacco Ways in Indian Country
In order to respectfully and effectively address the harmful epidemic of cigarette smoking among American Indian adults, ClearWay Minnesota listened carefully to Native communities and adopted a model that focused on the dangers of commercial tobacco use while honoring the traditional healing traditions of tobacco. This model is referred to as the “two tobacco ways” framework and serves as an instructive illustration of how context is important in addressing health disparities and heath equity across communities.
The Air That We Breathe
We and many colleagues believe that, in order to strengthen responses to the pressing crises we face, we must consider some converging determinants of health—racism, climate change, and COVID-19—together. Doing so is essential, not just for crisis management, but also for building resilient systems and infrastructure that enable everyone, particularly Black, Indigenous, and people of color communities, to breathe.
Managing America’s Crises Means Addressing the Political Determinants of Health
Too often we stop at these social drivers of inequities, however, and miss the link between social determinants of health and their political roots. Every social determinant of health is preceded by a political action, inaction, or impetus. Political determinants of health create the social drivers—including poor environmental conditions, inadequate transportation, unsafe neighborhoods, and lack of healthy food options—that affect all other dynamics of health.
Health Equity … It’s a Journey, Not a Destination
COVID-19 has struck with a vengeance, hitting African Americans, older adults, and those with chronic health conditions the hardest. Simultaneously, our nation is experiencing a moment of reckoning, resulting from a long history of racism that has shaped the foundation of this country and thus permeates every system and institution.
Muslim Chaplaincy: Cultural and Faith Based Leadership for Better Health
For years, hospitals have offered interfaith chaplains to provide faith support for Muslim families. But over 95 percent of these chaplains come from Christian backgrounds. In Minnesota, which has a Muslim population of about 150,000, it has become clear that it could be enormously beneficial to integrate appropriate faith leaders into systems of care in order to overcome significant cultural gaps between community and health care providers and provide meaningful support to families facing critical life questions.