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Beyond the Exam Room: Impacting Health Outcomes Through Civic Engagement
August marks Civic Health Month, a time to showcase the link between voting and health and celebrate efforts that ensure every voter can support their community’s health at the ballot box. At the same time, the United States is grappling with a health care system ranked 37th globally despite consuming 17 percent of the country’s GDP. With 26 million Americans uninsured and 43 million underinsured, the gap in access to care continues to widen. This crisis will deepen as critical ACA subsidies expire at the end of 2025, potentially leaving 3.8 million more Americans without coverage, in addition to new federal cuts to Medicaid and changes to how coverage is accessed through the health insurance marketplace, which could result in as many as 20 million Americans losing their health insurance.
Protecting Ballot Measures to Protect Democracy
Access to abortion care in Ohio. The chance to support city candidates with democracy vouchers in Seattle. Promoting judicial ethics in Colorado. An $11 an hour minimum wage in Arkansas. What do these policy changes have in common? They were all enacted through the ballot initiative process, and they all support healthy, thriving communities, both in process and in outcome. But multiple states are seeing efforts to curtail the ballot measure process, limiting the voices of voters.
Collaborating for Impact: Providing Trust-Based Grantmaking and Technical Assistance to Support Local Resilience to Extreme Weather Events
In the last few years, there has been an increased number of extreme weather events, including wildfires, tornadoes, hurricanes, floods and heatwaves in the United States. In 2023, the United States experienced 28 disasters that cost at least $1 billion, the largest number of billion-dollar disasters in a single year on record (Smith 2024). While some areas of the country are more susceptible to these threats, there are no regions immune to disasters. According to a recent Gallup poll, 37 percent of adults in the United States report they have been personally impacted by at least one extreme weather event in the last two years, which is higher than the 2022/2023 survey result at 33 percent.
Reports and Publications
A Tribute to Terrance Keenan at the 2009 Annual Meeting Seeing the Future with 20/20 Vision
Terrance Keenan, a founder of Grantmakers In Health (GIH), passed away on February 25 at the age of 85. Known for his leadership, innovation, and compassion, Mr. Keenan was a generous, consummate grantmaker whose career spanned more than 50 years in philanthropy, 46 of which were spent with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
From the Ground Up
The resource portfolio is from GIH’s 2006 annual meeting, From the Ground Up: Improving Community Health, Inspiring Community Action.
Health and Fiscal Policy
Given the amount of public expenditures devoted to health and concerns about the impact of changes in public policy on the nation’s most vulnerable residents, health grantmakers need to understand existing state and federal policies affecting revenues and expenditures and the implications of any changes on the table. They can also play an important role in the development and implementation of these policies. This portfolio, prepared for GIH’s 2004 Fall Forum, provides information and resources to help grantmakers understand the connections between health and fiscal policy.