Productive Partnerships

Twenty years ago, a small group of grantmakers launched a Health and Environmental Funders Network (HEFN), seeking to bridge health and environmental philanthropy and to focus more attention on links between human, wildlife, and ecosystem health. One of my first tasks as HEFN’s first staffer was to try to engage health funders in this enterprise.

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Philanthropy’s Role in Addressing Neighborhood Conditions That Shape Health

Philanthropy’s Role in Addressing Neighborhood Conditions That Shape Health

From sidewalks to toxic stress, evidence shows where people live has a greater impact on health than medical care, behavior, or genetics. As funders move upstream, there is increased interest in supporting efforts to build healthy places. This scan of the field explores how grantmakers are addressing neighborhood factors that shape health such as housing, community development, the built environment, and transportation.

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Clean and Safe Drinking Water: A Cornerstone of Healthy Lives

In California, where our foundation is based, upwards of 1 million residents lack access to clean and safe drinking water in their homes. Their drinking water is contaminated by nitrates from fertilizer, industrial solvents, naturally-occurring arsenic, and other harmful elements.

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Charting a Climate, Health, and Equity Agenda

Charting a Climate, Health, and Equity Agenda was held on November 14, 2017 in Detroit, Michigan.

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Community Water Fluoridation: Lessons for Improving Philanthropic Policy Advocacy

This webinar discussed where community water fluoridation stands today, the lessons learned for philanthropy, how policy campaigns can successfully engage on public health issues in a bipartisan manner, and recommendations for next steps to continue moving community water fluoridation efforts forward.

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Healthy Water, Healthy People

When it comes to our health, we tend to take water for granted. But as we have been reminded recently, failures within our fragile water systems can quickly become public health disasters. What is worse is that the people who are hit hardest typically live in our most vulnerable communities.

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Healthy Food, Healthy People: The Relationship Between Food and Real Estate

This webinar was an engaging discussion of how cross-sectoral partnerships among real estate developers, public sector institutions, universities, restauranteurs, chefs, farmers, and food retailers can support the health of people and the planet.

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Climate Change, Equity, and Health: How Funders Can Make a Difference

This webinar explored climate change through the lens of the social determinants of health; the long-term and immediate health and equity benefits of climate change strategies; and the ways in which health, equity, and environmental funders can intensify their impact.

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Creating Healthier Communities to Reverse Childhood Obesity

Learn how the YMCA’s Healthier Communities Initiatives, which include Pioneering Healthier Communities, Action Communities for Health, Innovation, & Environmental Change, and Statewide Pioneering Healthier Communities, are helping to address the obesity epidemic.

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