Arcora Foundation (Seattle, Washington)

Arcora Foundation awarded $120,000 in grants to Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHC) in Washington to conduct Apple Health (Medicaid) outreach and enrollment activities. These 6 FQHCs received $20,000 each:

To learn more, click here.

The Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan Foundation (Detroit, MI)

The Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan Foundation recently awarded eight community health matching grants to:

  • Affirmations Lesbian Gay Community Center Inc.—to support the expansion of mental health and care management services. ($30,000)
  • AYA Youth Collective—to provide onsite and low barrier, trauma-informed, and relational physical and behavioral health care and Medicaid enrollment. ($30,000)
  • Child & Family Services of Northwestern Michigan, Inc.—to support mental health services for families in Northwest Michigan. ($10,000)
  • Isabella County Child Advocacy Center—to increase access to child abuse and neglect prevention education. ($10,000)
  • Michigan State Medical Society Foundation—to support the 27th Annual Conference on Bioethics: Capacity and Consciousness. ($36,000)
  • Motherly Intercession—to support the Social Connections Program for women who have experienced or are impacted by incarceration to build their external support system. ($27,000)
  • Northern Michigan University Center for Rural Health—to implement a publicly available regional digital health and social resource locator for residents of the Upper Peninsula, Michigan. ($18,000)
  • R.L. Jones Community Outreach Center—to implement a colorectal cancer prevention program for adults between the age of 35-44 years old. ($30,000)

The foundation also awarded two requests for proposal grants:

  • The Groundwork Center for Resilient Communities—to increase access to fresh produce consumption by connecting Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program-eligible communities to online ordering of fresh produce and nutritious food. ($50,000)
  • Wayne State University Center for Behavioral Health and Justice—to support improving the response to people experiencing mental health or substance use-related emergencies through crisis care models. ($225,000)

Finally, the foundation also approved 18 awards to doctoral and medical students enrolled at seven Michigan universities under their annual Student Award Program. The intent of this program is to support the next generation of applied researchers in health and medical care. The Student Award Program offers a one-year up to $3,000 stipend to fund medical or dissertation research.

Contact: Elba Huerta at foundation@bcbsm.com.

The California Alliance of Academics and Communities for Public Health Equity (Oakland, CA)

The California Alliance of Academics and Communities for Public Health Equity (The Alliance) selected seven organizations to receive grants totaling more than $130,000 from the Fund. The Community Action Fund (CAF) is a new flagship funding program of The Alliance, whose mission is to advance health equity by growing the collective power of California’s academic public health programs in partnership with community-based organizations.

The seven CAF funded organizations use a health equity lens to impact change in one of the following three key areas: health workforce development, environment and health, and violence prevention. Each project is a collaboration between a supported community organization and a California-based School or Program of Public Health.

Grantees were chosen from a pool of 50 applicants in a competitive, open process managed by The Alliance. Selected projects cover a variety of regions throughout California and have a strong focus on historically excluded or marginalized communities and authentic community engagement.

Community Action Fund grant recipients include:

  • La Clínica de La Raza
  • Little Manila Rising
  • Local Clean Energy Alliance
  • Mixteco Indigena Community
  • Organizing Project
  • Raizes Collective
  • San Diego Youth Services
  • Youth Leadership Institute

Participating academic partner institutions include California State University, East Bay; California State University, Bakersfield; California State University, Fresno; University of California, Berkeley; University of California, Los Angeles; University of San Francisco; and State Diego State University. All applicants, as well as grantees, are invited to join The Alliance’s Action Groups on related themes to develop the organization’s symbiotic potential statewide.

Contact: Katie Galloway at 510.684.5627.

de Beaumont Foundation (Bethesda, MD) and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (Princeton, NJ)

The de Beaumont Foundation and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation gave $5 million over three years to four communities in Arizona, Maryland, Oregon, and Pennsylvania through the Modernized Anti-Racist Data Ecosystems (MADE) for Health Justice initiative. The grants will be used to develop health-focused local data ecosystems that center principles of anti-racism, equity, justice, and community power.

The four communities are:

  • Baltimore City Youth Data Hub (Baltimore City, MD)—to improve educational attainment and economic mobility for Baltimore City youth, with a focus on Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and immigrant youth. The Baltimore City Youth Data Hub will use data to identify community needs, shift public and private resources, and drive recommendations for programs and policy.
  • Community Data for Health and Environmental Justice (Portland and Multnomah County, OR)—to support and strengthen the resilience of marginalized and frontline communities in the context of climate impacts, including local climate and environmental justice planning and policy development. The partnership team will use its local data ecosystem to identify the needs of impacted communities, the barriers they face when seeking resources amid climate crises, and the investments necessary to uplift frontline communities in Portland and Multnomah County.
  • Data Justice for Pittsburgh’s Black Neighborhoods (Pittsburgh, PA)—to help residents in Black communities that have been harmed by residential segregation and disinvestment in the City of Pittsburgh gain tools to improve the quality of housing and the built environment. The goal of Data Justice for Pittsburgh’s Black Neighborhoods is to ensure that members of the Black community have a meaningful participatory role in the design of public data systems that will help redress environmental injustices.
  • Promoting Indigenous Models of Assessment (PIMA) (Tucson and Pima County, AZ)—to ensure that urban American Indians secure, retain, and advance in high-quality employment in Pima County, Arizona. The initiative seeks to create a more just employment environment for Pima County’s urban American Indian/Alaska Native community, breaking the cycle of intergenerational poverty and improving the community’s health and well-being.

To learn more, click here.

Direct Relief (Santa Barbara, CA)

Direct Relief is immediately disbursing $200,000 into four $50,000 grants to help fund operations by local medical responders in Maui. The organization is also distributing prepacked medical kits to shelters, mobile medical clinics, and first responders. Grant recipients include:

  • Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition of Hawai’i
  • Malama I Ke Ola Health Center (Community Clinic of Maui)
  • Maui Search and Rescue
  • Hui No Ke Ola Pono (Native Hawai’ian Health Center)

To learn more, click here.

Florida Blue Foundation (Jacksonville, FL)

The Florida Blue Foundation announced a $400,000 grant to Boys & Girls Clubs of America to help combat the youth mental health crisis. This grant is one of many initiatives Florida Blue and Florida Blue Foundation are investing in as part of ongoing efforts to expand community mental health services. Other community-based programs and services the company and Foundation support include:

  • Miami HEAT Mindfulness Sanctuary (Miami Gardens)—to support the opening of a safe space at Miami Carol City Senior High School where students and teachers can find respite from the daily stressors of home and school.
  • Strike the Stigma (Tampa Bay)—to hold a one-day “Strike the Stigma” symposium, dedicated to engaging Tampa-area high school students and their parents with mental well-being information, tools, and resources.
  • Orlando Community & Youth Trust, Inc., No Limit Psychotherapist: The Future Is You (Orlando)—to address the shortage of minority mental health providers, attracting more underrepresented people into the mental health field in Orange, Osceola, and Seminole Counties.
  • Catholic Charities Diocese of Venice, Youth Counseling Program (Venice)—to provide 23 high-need public schools in Lee County with free, accessible, and culturally sensitive youth mental health counseling.
  • IMPOWER, Inc., Psychiatry On- Demand (Statewide)—to support an on-demand telepsychiatry treatment program providing children and adults with immediate access to psychiatric services across Florida, including the most remote and provider-impoverished areas of the state.
  • Guitars Over Guns: M-Power Program (Miami-Dade)—to support a mental health program, Guitars Over Guns, that integrates mentoring, artistic instruction, performance, and trauma-informed care by providing social-emotional and therapeutic support programs.
  • Nova Southeastern University: STEPS School Toolkit for K-12 Educators to Prevent Suicide (Fort Lauderdale)—to support the STEPS program developed by a psychology professor at NSU, that equips school administrators, teachers, school mental health professionals and parents with tools to recognize student suicidal behavior and intervene effectively.
  • Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (Florida A&M) (FAMU), Development of Partnerships to Increase the Pipeline of Mental Health Professionals (Tallahassee)—to support a collaboration developing a statewide certification program for health care professionals and students to increase the pipeline of future practitioners.

To learn more, click here.

Contact: Ilyssa Drumm at 904.238.9153 or ilyssa.drumm@floridablue.com.

Foundation for a Healthy High Point (High Point, NC)

The Foundation for a Healthy High Point announced its Spring 2023 grant awards totaling $646,247. The local efforts will address behavioral health, capacity building, education, food security, maternal and child health, and youth-serving organizations. The funding will support a variety of initiatives.

The approved Spring 2023 grant recipients are:

  • Children & Families First (Formerly Guilford Child Development)—to support its Nurse-Family Partnership program that provides home visitation services for first-time, low-income mothers in High Point, North Carolina. ($60,000)
  • D-UP—to provide capacity-building support for significant expansion in the Washington Street neighborhood, including two new staff positions enabling the organization to focus on community development and strategic initiatives. ($166,667)
  • Family Service of the Piedmont—to provide startup funding to implement the Child First program, an evidence-based, intensive early childhood intervention that includes psychiatric evaluation, medication management, child and family therapies, and coordination of care and case management. ($100,000)
  • Guilford Nonprofit Consortium—to provide general operating support to strengthen and increase the capacity of nonprofit organizations serving High Point, North Carolina. ($30,000)
  • Mental Health Associates of the Triad—to support startup funding for expanding outpatient behavioral health services to the community. ($150,000)
  • NC Triad Fusion – for Beyond Sports NC—to support its expansion from serving four to nine Title I schools in High Point, North Carolina, enabling it to further demonstrate its model’s success. ($66,580)
  • Ready for School, Ready for Life—to provide general operating expenses for the organization’s critical role as a backbone organization in guiding the initiative’s vision, implementation, partnerships, measurement, and evaluation. ($35,000)
  • Second Harvest Food Bank—to support expanding two existing programs. The Farm Fresh program will increase access to fresh fruits and vegetables at a local pantry and support a local farm. The Community Meals program will provide meals for family members not covered by government programs. ($38,000)

Last year, the foundation funded 36 projects for $2,116,295 in grant awards. Since its inception, the foundation has approved over $13 million to support the Greater High Point, North Carolina community.

Contact: Curtis Holloman at 336.822.7740 or cholloman@healthyhighpoint.org.

The Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation (Owing Mills, MD)

The Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation is deeply concerned about the devastating wildfires on Maui and Hawaiʻi Island and stands ready to respond to immediate needs and will continue to monitor the situation to support long-term recovery. As a first step, the foundation dedicated $850,000 in grants to address the physical and mental health needs of keiki (children), families, and residents of all ages, as well as to begin to rebuild and restore the community. These grants will go to organizations as follows:

  • Hawai‘i Community Foundation Maui Strong Fund—to support evolving needs as assessed by government and community partners, including shelter, food, financial assistance, and other services. ($500,000)
  • Jewish Community Services of Hawaiʻi—to support recovery from the wildfires in the state’s Jewish community, including mental health and crisis-intervention services, as well as emergency funds for those in extreme need. ($100,000)
  • Vibrant Hawaiʻi—to support this community-based organization in connecting residents on Hawaiʻi Island and statewide with the resources available to them, as well as long-term response, recovery, and resilience. ($25,000)

Contact: 410.654.8500.

Share this