Cara V. James, PhD, President and CEO, Grantmakers In Health
When we launched our strategic plan, we noted that to achieve our vision of better health for all through better philanthropy we would need to use our voice to take a more active role to influence advocacy, policy, and funding in targeted areas that will advance health and make a lasting, measurable impact. Our current health “system” is not designed to promote health and wellness, but to provide care once a person is sick, and it is built on a foundation of inequity based on health coverage, or a lack thereof. Achieving better health for all requires changing the environment in which we are operating, and I believe health funders have a vital role to play in restructuring our systems to advance health and wellbeing and to achieve health equity. If we do not make these changes then our programs and initiatives will merely be tinkering at the edges.
Since launching the strategic plan, we have engaged our board and our Funding Partners to develop a process to determine when to use our voice and prioritized which of the many issues we should focus on. The result is our first policy agenda, which identifies our public policy priorities for the coming year. Our policy priorities are anchored in four goals that align with the focus areas of our strategic plan, or what we call the building blocks for achieving better health for all through better philanthropy: 1) advance health equity and social justice, 2) expand health care access and improve quality of care, 3) improve population health, and 4) promote community engagement and empowerment. Our policy priorities are a reminder that philanthropic investments to inform and influence public policy are not only permissible, but necessary.
We identified nine objectives to advance the goals of the policy agenda. Read the detailed agenda for examples of specific actions funders can take within each objective. We chose objectives that are actionable, timely, relevant, and leverage our organizational resources and unique positioning to lead. In selecting objectives, we prioritized issues with a strong evidence-based demonstrating their effect on health outcomes. We also chose priorities that we hope will galvanize health funders to engage how and where they can, and to work collaboratively. In each of our listening sessions, the first four objectives were consistently identified by health funders as being most critical to achieve better health for all.
| GIH’s 2023 Policy Objectives | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Ensure comprehensive health insurance coverage for all. |
| 2 | Expand the supply, diversity, cultural responsiveness, and safety of the health workforce. |
| 3 | Invest and encourage innovation in the public health infrastructure at federal, state, and local levels. |
| 4 | Increase access to high quality equitable care for mental health and substance use. |
| 5 | Increase the availability of high-quality health care services. |
| 6 | Eliminate nutrition insecurity by making fresh, healthy food accessible and affordable in every community. |
| 7 | Ensure safe and affordable housing. |
| 8 | Reduce poverty and advance economic mobility. |
| 9 | Protect and strengthen democracy. |
We recognize this is an ambitious agenda, and that it is not inclusive of everything we could do to achieve better health for all, nor inclusive of all the activities in which Funding Partners are engaged. We know we need to play the long game to achieve progress on these policy objectives, as they are not achievable in one year. To advance our policy priorities, GIH will develop programming for each objective, with more robust programming in the four priority areas identified by health funders. We will also continue to use our voice to support the national dialogue on important policy issues. Finally, we hope these priorities will promote better communication and cooperation among funders and others, as these elements are critical to the success of this ambitious agenda. To that end, we will provide opportunities for Funding Partners to network with other funders engaged in policy work as well as individuals outside of philanthropy and to provide input on future GIH priorities.
We invite you to join us on February 14 at 2:00 p.m. ET, for a webinar to learn more about the policy agenda process, learn how you can get involved, and connect with other policy-oriented funders. We look forward to collaborating with you to change the system to promote better health for all in the months and years to come.