Heather Hyden, Population Health Strategy Lead, Humana Foundation
Soojin Conover, Innovation Portfolio Strategy Principal, Humana Foundation
Interviewer: Maya Schane, Grantmakers In Health
Grantmakers In Health’s Maya Schane spoke with Heather Hyden and Soojin Conover of the Humana Foundation about the Foundation’s recently published report, Strengthening Science and Community Impact Through Equitable Research Practices. The report examines innovative research methods adopted by the Foundation’s partners to promote health equity in public health research through community-engaged research practices.
The Humana Foundation is the philanthropic arm of health insurance company Humana, Inc. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What is the history and mission of the Humana Foundation?
Soojin Conover: In 1981, the Humana Foundation was established as the philanthropic arm of Humana Inc, and the Foundation was founded in Louisville, Kentucky to support the Louisville community. For more than 40 years, we have carried the founders’ goals forward, working to promote underserved populations in need and enhancing the health and well-being of communities across the country. Now, the Humana Foundation is committed to advancing health equity by working to eliminate unjust, avoidable, and unnecessary barriers in health and health care. We specifically support seniors, veterans, and school aged children in living connected, healthy lives. We work in three key areas: 1) creating healthy emotional connections; 2) shaping a healthier approach to nutrition; and 3) deploying our knowledge and resources as the stewards of good health in communities across the country, with specific emphasis in Louisville, Kentucky and in Florida, Texas, and Louisiana. We currently have four domains of grantmaking: Connected Healthy Lives, the Health Equity Innovation Fund, Disaster Philanthropy, and Research. The Humana Foundation supports a diverse portfolio of projects and works with partners with a similar vision of removing barriers to support greater health equity.
The Humana Foundation recently released a report on community-engaged research practices. What are some of the report’s important findings?
Heather Hyden: The Foundation’s report highlights how its research funding strategy promotes health equity. It identifies three key practices that our partners have used: 1) expanding access through culturally responsive methods; 2) promoting community leadership in the research design process; and 3) respecting human dignity by ensuring the safety of participants, providing fair compensation, and reducing stigma. The report encourages funders to prioritize equity, clearly define expectations, and adopt flexible funding models to support effective, community driven health solutions.
Who are the Humana Foundation’s main partners and stakeholders, and who is the intended audience of this report?
Heather Hyden: Our partners are nonprofits focused on improving mental health and nutrition for diverse, underserved seniors, school aged youth, and veterans in Louisville, Florida, Texas, and Louisiana. Our audience for the report is primarily health-focused funders, and we’re also sharing our findings with the health research community at conferences to encourage wider adoption of equitable research practices.
What prompted the Humana Foundation to develop this report and how does it align with the Foundation’s broader commitment to health equity?
Soojin Conover: We thought it was important to develop this report because we saw a need to provide specific examples that we observed from our research portfolio of how equitable practices can be integrated into health research in various phases, from design to outreach to dissemination of findings. The purpose is also to share our research strategy and how we operationalize it. We believe that supporting innovative, solutions-focused research that addresses health equity issues that are relevant to the needs of a community is how we can improve outcomes for diverse and underserved individuals and communities, and we can learn from people directly impacted by health disparities. Our listening approach is essential to our mission, and our publication strategy is anchored in sharing key insights from our partners to scale best practices and improve systems for better health outcomes.
How has the Foundation’s approach to funding research evolved over time, particularly in integrating community voices and leadership?
Soojin Conover: To be transparent, our research grants program launched very recently—about two years ago—to help generate new knowledge that translates into practical solutions to improve health equity and share knowledge with broader health ecosystems.
Our grantmaking in research focuses on awarding support that creates healthy emotional connections and shapes a healthier approach to nutrition for seniors, school aged children, and veterans. We support solutions-focused research with an emphasis on community-centered collaboration, so that research can be relevant to the needs of the communities we serve. Annually, we develop a research agenda based on the gaps we have identified and our health equity goals.
We invite academic researchers with multidisciplinary teams that leverage innovative interventions or strategies focused on serving low-resource and racially and ethnically diverse communities. We ask applicants to describe how they will engage community in research, and we review the research team’s plans to reflect community voices, work with community leadership in the research process, and increase the representation of diverse populations in their study. This is aligned with our approach to health equity, because we believe strong research should include equitable engagement with people directly impacted by health disparities.
As a quick follow up to that, you said the research program launched in 2023—what was so significant about this moment that made the Humana Foundation create this grantmaking program?
Soojin Conover: We had new leadership come in around that time—our CEO, Tiffany Benjamin—and she envisioned the need to generate new, science-based knowledge that can be translated into practical solutions to improve health equity for the populations and communities we serve. There was an emphasis on sharing this knowledge with broader health ecosystems so different stakeholders can leverage the insights and serve their communities in better ways. That’s how we started our research strategy—and to operationalize it, we launched our research grants program.
What impact have you seen among grantees or communities that practice these community-engaged research practices compared to more traditional research approaches?
Heather Hyden: First, we’re excited to announce that we’re going to publish a follow up article to this report that will specifically focus on community impacts. Our research partners are in the middle of their projects right now, but we’re going to do a follow-up where we ask them about the impacts in the communities that they have been serving on the ground. However, our partners have already shared their experiences that community-engaged research approaches foster mutual trust between researchers and communities and help ensure the research is relevant to the community. You don’t want to promote an intervention that’s not relevant, and ultimately, it leads to better science with lasting impact on people’s lives.
You mentioned before that the report identifies three distinct themes:
- expanding access and opportunity;
- promoting community leadership; and
- respecting human dignity.
Can you share some more specific examples of how you’ve operationalized these in practice?
Heather Hyden: In our partners’ research processes, we have seen examples such as food as medicine interventions that are tailored to reflect dietary traditions and preferences of the communities they serve, which are relevant under the first theme of expanding access and opportunity. For example, one partner in North Carolina is modifying the Mediterranean diet to make it a southern Mediterranean diet.
We also saw that outreach efforts rely on trusted community networks such as churches, radio stations, and local nonprofit organizations. Under the second theme of community leadership, we saw the creation of community advisory boards, including a youth advisory board that was leading the research process from start to finish. We also saw a lot of partnerships with nonprofit organizations, such as food pantries and other types of programs.
Under the final theme of respecting human dignity, we saw an example of our partners reducing stigma in the research process. One of our partners waived the need for participants to take a food security survey to participate, because participants know that they need the support and the food; we don’t need to put them through that extra hoop. Another critical thing we often don’t think about under this theme is creating a more welcoming and friendly environment. For example, partners provide tips and training to food delivery drivers, so they are more welcoming whenever community members receive food boxes. Those little things really add up to create a more dignified experience for the participants. The last thing is prioritizing communication, especially communications that are easier to access for participants, like sending out survey links through text messages, and sending out research updates through text messaging.
How is the Foundation adapting its commitments in the face of challenges to the values of equity?
Soojin Conover: We remain committed to health equity. For more than 40 years, we have worked to advance health equity guided by data and research about the growing emotional health and nutrition needs of the communities we serve. We will continue to support individuals and communities facing challenges affecting their health and quality of life by making intentional investments in initiatives that promote greater health equity.
What would you highlight as a particularly innovative or promising aspect of this research and this report?
Heather Hyden: One of the things we really want to highlight about this report is that we’re sharing specific examples of community-engaged research. We’re not only outlining the value of these approaches, but we also provide examples so that other foundations or researchers can take steps today to integrate these methods into their work. This is especially innovative for clinical trials and other translational research. The history of clinical and interventional research has shown there is a need for more community-based, participatory research to hear more directly from communities experiencing health disparities and to help build trust. We feel like by improving accessibility, promoting community leadership, and centering human dignity, we expect to see more rigorous and sustainable public health interventions.
What key insights and practices do you think health philanthropy should take away from this report?
Heather Hyden: There’s a spectrum of community-engaged research practices that builds equity into the research process to improve long-term outcomes for diverse and underserved populations. This is not just a one-size-fits-all approach.
We want to encourage funders to take action by ensuring their research strategies are focused on achieving health equity. In addition, we hope funders focus on how these goals are achieved through innovative research practices—so not just having a focus on equity but also looking at the process of how that is achieved through the research.
We think it’s important for funders to familiarize themselves with equitable research trends so that they can better identify them whenever they see them in grant applications. Also, we encourage funders to clarify to applicants that they are seeking equitable approaches—make that really clear. Also, they should make it clear that they are looking for research that’s targeting underserved, lower resourced, and diverse populations.
The [last] one—which is really important, especially for funders—is to consider funding models that provide researchers with flexibility so they can work more effectively with communities. Ensuring they have the resources to adapt and address public health challenges is really a vital investment in healthier communities.
If you are interested in learning more about the Humana Foundation’s strategy or learnings from the report, please contact Heather Hyden at hhyden1@humana.com.