Critical Services for Our Children: Integrating Mental and Oral Health into Primary Care
Grantmakers have long been interested in improving children’s access to health care. Yet, a number of services critical to children’s healthy growth and development—such as mental health and oral health services—fall outside the traditional primary care model. This fragmentation of services has contributed to access barriers and has compromised the quality of pediatric care. Growing awareness of the importance of mental health and oral health has resulted in a variety of innovative efforts to integrate these services into children’s health care.
Communicating for Policy Change
Health foundations have traditionally overlooked communications as an essential tool for achieving strategic goals and, instead, have preferred to engage in “FYI” communications such as issuing annual reports, newsletters, and press releases on foundation grants. As this GIH Issue Brief Communicating for Policy Change reports, this attitude has evolved into one where more and more grantmakers recognize the importance of communications in their own work, specifically efforts to influence health policy.
“Replication” Local Style: A Philadelphia Story
Adapting a program model that works in one place requires knowing which elements can be modified, which cannot, and how to line up home support.
Considering Quality: Engaging Consumers to Make Better Health Care Decisions
This Issue Brief examines the potential of consumers to use information to select high-quality health services and to become drivers of quality improvement at the systems level. Information tools for consumers, such as report cards on health plans and providers, decision support aides, and the Internet are discussed. It also takes a look at the roles foundations can play in developing and disseminating quality information for consumers, such as developing quality indicators; assessing the effectiveness of information technology, including the Internet; and funding advocacy efforts to ensure consumers have the information needed to make appropriate health care choices.
Reversing the Obesity Epidemic: Policy Strategies for Health Funders
This report presents the rationale for using policy approaches to change food and physical activity environments. The report highlights the efforts of health funders supporting policy change in schools, food systems and sustainable agriculture, the built environment, and across communities. It also briefly examines trends and opportunities in health systems, workplaces, and state programs, and concludes with a discussion of challenges and opportunities for moving forward.
Making the Most Out of Community Advisory Committees
Lessons from conversion foundation CACs can inform other foundations’ efforts to elicit community input.
Improving Health Care Access: Grantmakers Share Their Experiences
This report is a collection of profiles that tells the stories of how health funders across the country are working to improve access to health care. With these profiles, we have attempted to capture the priorities, funding strategies, accomplishments, and challenges of a cross section of grantmakers, giving readers a place to look for insights that they can adapt to their own circumstances. Download the full report or the executive summary.
Counting in Connecticut: Arming Advocates to Protect Health
A foundation provides a Medicaid coalition with the hard numbers that help sway a statehouse.
What to Expect When You’re Expecting to Improve Community Health
Building grassroots capacity for change can be a messy, hard-to-measure business.
The Path to Policy Change: Practical Steps and Lessons from Health Funders
As part of its continuing mission to serve trustees and staff of health foundations and corporate giving programs, on November 3, 2005, Grantmakers In Health (GIH) convened nearly 80 grantmakers and a diverse group of individuals with expertise in different types of public policy work to discuss the challenges and opportunities for health funders interested in fostering systemic change. This report offers lessons learned about how to approach public policy work generally as well as those related to advocacy, communications, community organizing, data development and analysis, and evaluation.