Tiffany Hall, Executive Director of Recover Alaska will receive Grantmaker In Health’s (GIH) 2021 Andy Hyman Award for Advocacy. The award pays tribute to advocacy grantees who embody Andy Hyman’s commitment to principled action, passionate leadership to advance social change, and dedication to making progress in policy and practice despite challenging political environments. Ms. Hall was nominated by Diane Kaplan of the Rasmuson Foundation in Alaska and Robin Mockenhaupt, formerly of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Recover Alaska is a nonprofit coalition that addresses excessive alcohol consumption in Alaska. In her role as Executive Director, Ms. Hall employs a mix of traditional, innovative, and grassroots advocacy techniques to achieve systems change. Ms. Hall’s leadership at Recover Alaska has improved access to information and treatment for alcohol misuse by analyzing data to identify gaps in services and resources and advocating for policy and practice improvements.
Ms. Hall has led the organization to implement communications campaigns that shift social norms concerning alcohol for both youth and adults, conduct public opinion polls, and build advocacy coalitions; pilot a prevention and treatment referral and navigation system; and develop award-winning media partnerships to elevate the conversation around alcohol misuse and pathways to recovery. Her accomplishments include instituting a “sober garden” at the Alaska State Fair, encouraging restaurants to offer more alcohol-free drink options, working to pass legislation to encourage youth alcohol education beyond incrimination, spearheading in-depth research on Alaska’s local option alcohol laws to inform local voting, and funding youth-led mini-grants to rural communities.
Ms. Hall’s efforts also led to the passage of Proposition 13, an alcohol sales tax in Anchorage intended to reduce the impact of alcohol misuse and provide a revenue stream to support homelessness services; substance use and mental health services; as well as child abuse, sexual assault, and domestic violence prevention services. The 5% tax is estimated to raise $11-$14 million annually. Following the initiative’s passage, Ms. Hall partnered with stakeholders and people with lived experience to develop recommendations for the use of these alcohol tax revenues. These recommendations included funding behavioral health first responders to work alongside police officers in times of crises, upstream and downstream prevention, and the establishment of a chief diversity officer at the municipality to ensure that these new resources are equitably deployed and focus on addressing race-based health disparities.
Ms. Hall was born and raised in Anchorage and is actively involved in the community. She volunteers for Story Works Alaska, ChildFirst Alaska, and the Pride Foundation. Currently, she chairs the Anchorage Women’s Commission and sits on the board of directors for the YWCA Alaska. Her personal story of recovery can be seen in Recover Alaska’s Day 001 video series.
GIH established the Andy Hyman Award for Advocacy in 2017 in honor of Andy Hyman, a passionate and innovative grantmaker committed to health advocacy. The award will be presented to Ms. Hall on June 11, 2021 at the virtual GIH Annual Conference on Health Philanthropy.