Building Community Power to Improve Climate Resilience and Health Equity: Learning What It Takes
Over the past decade, many health foundations have shifted from funding specific programs to addressing social determinants of health by supporting policy and systems change strategies Abundant research has demonstrated that low-income communities of color face structural barriers to health that more affluent white communities do not, ranging from access to healthy food to stable housing and clean air. These differences in community conditions didn’t happen by accident—they are the result of intentional policy decisions over generations that apportioned resources and opportunities along racial and ethnic lines.
2023 Survey Summary: Climate Change Strategies
This infographic summarizes the responses to a Grantmakers In Health funder survey, conducted in May and June 2023, on how philanthropy is addressing climate change, and the barriers and opportunities that exist to support climate-related efforts.
Strengthening a National Field of Practice for Climate, Health, and Equity: Learning What it Takes
When The Kresge Foundation’s Climate Change, Health and Equity (CCHE) initiative launched in 2018, community power mobilization was integral because too often the people closest to viable climate resilience solutions were excluded from decisionmaking. Since then, the leadership of CCHE’s community-based, health practitioner, and health institution partners has underscored the significance of community power to transform climate policy and public health practice.
NCRP Climate Justice and Just Transition Campaign
The National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP) recently announced their multi-year campaign to get grantmakers to invest more in grassroots climate solutions. NCRP’s latest online journal features several articles on the climate justice and just transition campaign.
How Climate Change Affects Our Mental Health, and What We Can Do About It
The Commonwealth Fund recently published an article on how climate change doesn’t just affect our physical health but can also harm our mental health, further taxing a behavioral health care system already in crisis.
Impact Investing Opportunities to Advance Water, Health, and Equity
A new report from the Environmental Policy Innovation Center and supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation outlines ways that philanthropy can use strategic investments to help ensure that drinking water is safe for all.
Cara V. James Interviewed on TED Health Podcast: Advancing Public Health
Grantmakers In Health President and CEO Cara V. James was interviewed by Shoshana Ungerleider on the September 21, 2022 episode of the TED Health podcast about challenges faced by the U.S. public health system.
Centering Racial Justice to Address Climate Change: Learning What it Takes
In 2018, the Kresge Foundation launched the Climate Change, Health, and Equity (CCHE) initiative as a 5-year, $22 million commitment to accelerate action on climate change and climate-related inequities in health. Since its inception, the CCHE network has worked in distinct, yet aligned strategies that focus on health institutions, practitioner and professional societies, and community-based organizations. The priority was to bring together diverse grant-funded partners at different points along their equity journey, with initiative partners providing evaluation, technical assistance, and support to sustain the network.
Children’s Environmental Health Day: Actions Needed Now to Protect Our Children’s Health
It has been over a decade since the World Health Organization raised the alarm that chronic diseases—including cardiovascular, cancer, diabetes, obesity, and metabolic syndrome—are rapidly becoming an epidemic in developed nations, and increasingly, in developing nations. Escalating rates of neurocognitive, metabolic, autoimmune, and cardiovascular diseases cannot be solely attributed to lifestyle, genetics, and nutrition. Prenatal, early life, and ongoing exposures, along with bio-accumulative toxicants, are playing a large role in the increased incidence of chronic disease. In fact, we need only look at the statistics to see that chronic disease rates in children are on the rise, and this can often be linked to toxic exposures.
Reducing Pollution: Critical Pathway for Cancer Prevention
Health professionals and health advocacy groups are learning how they can elevate environmental chemicals as an important element of cancer prevention, including in research design, clinical practice, policy advocacy, and in cancer initiatives such as the Beau Biden Moonshot and states’ 5-year cancer prevention and control plans. When health leaders are given the opportunity to examine barriers to cancer prevention, including those they may contribute to, they gain confidence in their ability—and responsibility—to use their power as trusted messengers to call for dramatic reductions in carcinogens.