Riding Wild Horses: Philanthropic Strategy in An Era of Unpredictable Health Policy
In 2015, Montana passed bipartisan legislation to expand Medicaid for low-income adults. The new coverage went into effect in January 2016. Within a year, Montana’s uninsured rate dropped from 15 to 7.4 percent and more than 30,000 thousand newly-insured people had already obtained preventive services.
StartStrong: Transforming the System of Care to Reduce Infant Mortality
It is a dichotomy to think that the United States, with the sophisticated medical care available here, has higher infant mortality rates than most other developed countries. A higher rate of premature births in the United States is the main reason for this poor ranking.
Recounting Thirty Years of Health Philanthropy
In 1987, the opportunity to lead a new health foundation was appealing enough for me to leave a partnership in a thirty-five-person law firm. I believed the new job would permit reacquaintance with my wife and three young children and the opportunity to make the world a little better.
How Foundations Can Accelerate Health System Improvement by Investing in Capacity Building Across Sectors
At a time when the health care system is facing a host of challenges, many with attributes that are impossible to solve alone, we see organizations from across the health and social sectors combining their skills and expertise through interesting partnerships to crack the “impossible” together.
Funding Upstream Solutions is Key to Remedy the Social Ills of Trauma
The root cause philanthropy cannot ignore, regardless of the outcomes we seek or the population we serve, is exposure to trauma. Trauma is defined as the effects of a single event, a series of events, and ongoing circumstances that are experienced or perceived as physically or emotionally harmful and life threatening.
Using Rapid Evidence Reviews to Inform Health Funders’ Decisions
Between 2015 and 2017, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) commissioned AcademyHealth, the professional society for health services research, and its Translation and Dissemination Institute, to develop and test a “rapid evidence review” (RER) process that could meet the needs of decisionmakers for fast, low-cost, but rigorous syntheses of evidence about health-related services and programs.
Immigration as a Social Determinant of Health
The bedrock of our immigration policy is exclusion. Anti-immigrant sentiment continues to run through our laws, from the rise of anti-immigrant policies of the 1990s to the overwhelmingly anti-immigrant rhetoric permeating our society today.
Care Partners: How Philanthropy Can Kick-Start Programs to Engage Community and Family Members to Improve Depression Care for Older Adults
Late-life depression is a pressing public health concern among an aging population facing increasing chronic health concerns. As many as 5 to 10 percent of older adults seen in a primary care health setting suffer from depression, which can last for months or even years, and is associated with both decreased quality of life and higher health care costs.
Upstream, Systems-Based Solutions to the Oral Health Epidemic
At the turn of this century, then Surgeon General Dr. David Satcher put out the first Surgeons’ General Report on oral health and declared that poor oral health was a “silent” epidemic that impacted much of the United States. That declaration was a pivotal moment that increased salience and spurred action around the issue.
Clean and Safe Drinking Water: A Cornerstone of Healthy Lives
In California, where our foundation is based, upwards of 1 million residents lack access to clean and safe drinking water in their homes. Their drinking water is contaminated by nitrates from fertilizer, industrial solvents, naturally-occurring arsenic, and other harmful elements.