Strategic Thinking for Health Funders

Children’s access to health care has been a longstanding policy issue, with strong bipartisan support for expanding insurance coverage and redesigning the health care delivery system in ways that benefit young people. Despite enormous progress made over the past two decades, however, millions of children remain unable to obtain needed health services. This Issue Brief covers how the current health care system succeeds and fails for children, emerging policy developments, what grantmakers are currently doing to promote children’s access to health services, and lessons learned to help guide future work.

This Issue Brief explores the unique health, social, and policy issues that affect immigrant populations; it looks at attitudes toward immigration and how these influence support for social programs and the provision of public benefits; it highlights philanthropic activities to improve health care access and coverage for immigrants and their families; and discusses how grantmakers are working to ensure the health and well-being of immigrants in their communities.

Every year, thousands of children nationwide experience trauma as a result of exposure to violence, abuse, natural disasters, severe illness or injury, loss of loved ones due to violence or accident, or forced relocation. This exposure can have both immediate and long-term effects on children’s health and their ability to function fully in their families, schools, and communities. This Issue Brief focuses on the needs of children exposed to trauma, strategies for early identification and intervention, and ensuring the provision of timely and appropriate services to them and their caregivers.

GIH’s latest Issue Brief Building a Healthier Future: Partnering to Improve Public Health combines the conversation of a one-day Issue Dialogue with a background paper to identify significant opportunities for grantmakers to partner with public health agencies at the local, state, and national levels, as well as with organizations outside of the traditional public health system, such as faith-based communities, employers, and community organizations. Specifically, this document will help further grantmaker efforts to build and sustain public health partnerships.

Improving Health Access in Communities: Lessons for Effective Grantmaking highlights grantmaking lessons from two initiatives designed to help alleviate the burden of high uninsurance rates at the local level: Communities in Charge program, funded by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), and Community Voices, funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. This report details the valuable strategic lessons learned from these initiatives. Lessons related to developing community coalitions, creating successful grantor-grantee relationships, and understanding the comparative advantages of national and local funders are relevant to grantmakers funding or planning to fund in this and other health issues. 

Funding Health Advocacy incorporates the essence and richness of the discussion at GIH’s November 2004 Issue Dialogue on health advocacy with a background paper previously prepared for the meeting. It focuses on the challenges and opportunities involved with funding advocacy and engaging in public policy work. This Issue Brief complements GIH’s ongoing work to support grantmakers in their efforts to fund policy-relevant projects and builds upon GIH’s track record of work on grantmakers’ strategies for shaping public policy.

As a behavior change technique, social marketing has proven effective in motivating people to make the complex and difficult behavior changes that can improve health and reduce the risk of chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, and diabetes. This Issue Brief uses the lens of tobacco prevention and cessation, physical activity, and healthy eating to examine how health grantmakers can use social marketing principles and techniques to encourage and support the adoption of healthier behaviors across the lifespan.

Chronic diseases such as heart disease, cancer, lung disease, stroke, and diabetes are among the most serious threats to the nation’s health. This Issue Brief explores the contribution of specific behaviors to the development of chronic diseases and discusses how research on tobacco control can guide grantmakers interested in designing comprehensive strategies that help people adopt healthy behaviors and create environments that help people be successful in their efforts to live healthier lives.

This Issue Brief, based on an April 2003 Issue Dialogue, calls on grantmakers to take a leadership role in shaping the language access agenda to ensure that all individuals have equal access to quality health care. Sections include: recent immigration trends and demographic changes; the effect of language barriers on health outcomes and health care processes; laws and policies regarding the provision of language services to patients; strategies for improving language access; and roles for foundations in supporting improved language access, including examples of current activities.

Based on a November 2002 Issue Dialogue, this Issue Brief examines the nation’s public health infrastructure and explores opportunities for grantmakers to strengthen and sustain this fragile and troubled system. The report provides and overview of the nation’s public health system and its infrastructure weaknesses. It also discusses the challenges faced by state and local public health agencies as they struggle to maintain and improve the health of the public while simultaneously preparing for the possibility of bioterrorism. Finally, the report looks at foundation strategies to help buttress the public health system’s infrastructure.