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

The Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan Foundation awarded 22 community matching grants. 

Grantees include: 

  • Ascension St. John Foundation—to expand Mobile Health Screening Center services to provide cardiovascular health education, preventive heart screenings, and earlier detection of cardiovascular disease for veterans and first responders. ($30,000) 
  • Asian Center of Southeast Michigan—to implement and evaluate a holistic eHealth community wellness program for older Asian Americans. ($33,000) 
  • Benzie Leelanau District Health Department—to meet students’ and families’ social service and behavioral health needs through connections and navigation services of Community Health Workers. ($34,500)
  • Birth Detroit—to support community-based pre- and post-natal midwifery services and programs to improve maternal outcomes for Black women. ($38,000)
  • Catherine’s Health Center—to establish a telehealth suite within Mel Trotter to connect with Catherine’s psychiatry providers to reduce barriers to care and improve access to continuous psychiatric services for individuals with mental illness. ($42,000)
  • Communities First, Inc.—to provide wrap-around supportive services for individuals with disabilities experiencing homelessness. ($25,000)
  • Crossroads Ministries, Inc.—to support program expansion of the fatherhood initiative, in-depth mentoring to moms, reproductive loss recovery, and sexual risk avoidance education. ($2,500)
  • Growing Hope, Inc.—to address food and nutrition insecurity by supporting garden development in Ypsilanti. ($38,000)
  • Habitat for Humanity Detroit—to evaluate the effect of the Return Home Safe program intervention on the reductions of falls, emergency department visits, hospital readmissions, and cost of health care. ($15,000)
  • Ionia Montcalm Secure and Friendly Environment Child Advocacy Center—to increase child abuse awareness among kindergarten through fourth-grade students, their families, and teachers in Ionia and Montcalm, Michigan. ($20,000)
  • Johannesburg Christian Church—to provide new AEDs to the Michigan State Police, Gaylord Post, to request new AEDs to provide medical assistance and help save lives. ($5,000) 
  • Lifeboat Addiction Recovery Services—to expand the Lifeboat Outreach Initiative to serve those who experience substance use disorder and homelessness. ($25,000) 
  • Michigan State Medical Society Foundation—to improve healthcare providers knowledge of bioethical considerations of medical practice at the “MSMS Foundation’s 26th Annual Conference on Bioethics.” ($36,000) 
  • Michigan State University College of Human Medicine—to promote and increase the understanding of microaggression among medical education faculty. ($50,000) 
  • Northern Michigan Opioid Response Consortium—to increase the number of distributed Naloxone Safety Kits and Medication Care Kits. ($5,000) 
  • Otsego County Child Welfare Alliance—to support for child abuse prevention and awareness programs, the needs of families, and mandated reporter training. ($5,000) 
  • Otsego County Food Pantry—to support efforts to address food and nutrition insecurity. ($5,000)
  • The SASHA Center—to support the Mental Health Wellness Connection Project. ($34,750)
  • United Methodist Community House—to increase access to nutritious food to improve health equity by supporting The Fresh Market’s food procurement. ($30,000)
  • West Michigan Veterans Coalition—to support volunteer training and mileage reimbursement for volunteers that provide medical and non-medical transportation for veterans and their support person. ($10,000) 
  • Women’s Resource Center of Northern Michigan—to support programs and emergency and ongoing services for survivors of domestic abuse and/or sexual assault. ($5,000)  
  • YMCA of Metropolitan Detroit—to support the LIVESTRONG program for adult cancer survivors to reclaim their health and well-being with the support and participation of their primary caregivers. ($18,000) 

The foundation also approved 17 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 $3,000 stipend to fund medical or dissertation research.

Contact: Elba Huerta at foundation@bcbsm.com.

Foundation for a Healthy Highpoint (Highpoint, NC)

The Foundation for a Healthy High Point adopted a Strategic Direction developed to guide its future efforts to collaboratively engage the Greater High Point, North Carolina community to transform the upstream, long-standing issues that cause poor health outcomes. 

With research from the UNCG Center for Housing and Community Studies and the National Institute of Minority Economic Development’s Research, Policy and Impact Center, and working with its board members, area nonprofit leaders, regional health care professionals, direct service providers, and other stakeholders, the foundation took a close look at the inequities across race, gender, sexual identity, age, ethnicity, and other social statuses that cause health disparities. 

This data-driven, inclusive process identified complex social determinants of health that have the most significant potential impact on community health outcomes in Greater High Point, North Carolina. These include non-medical issues such as neighborhoods lacking transportation, affordable housing, access to nutritious food, mental health care, and safety. Each one requires an upstream approach to attain long-term improvement. The foundation’s Strategic Direction identifies five key areas: 

  • Economic Stability 
  • Education, Access, and Quality 
  • Health Care Access and Quality 
  • Neighborhood Conditions and Built Environment 
  • Social and Community Context 

Founded in 2013, the foundation has invested in and will continue to fund maternal and child health, early childhood education, and behavioral health. Now it will also broaden its approach to include more ways to achieve community-wide impact. The revised mission and vision statements reflect its commitment to being a community leader, helping bring about change that improves health. 

Contact: Curtis Holloman at 336.822.7744 or cholloman@healthyhighpoint.org.

Foundation for Opioid Response Efforts (New York, NY) 

The Foundation for Opioid Response Efforts (FORE) announced three new grants totaling nearly $2 million to fund programs at Legal Aid Services of Oklahoma, Hektoen Institute of Medicine, and the National Academy of State Health Policy.  

Details about the grants include: 

  • Legal Aid Services of Oklahoma—to bring together medical and legal expertise to identify and reduce social stressors and increase access to opioid use disorder treatment and recovery services for families. This grant will enable the Legal Aid Services of Oklahoma, the state’s only legal aid services provider, to pilot a medical-legal partnership for opioid use disorder clients and their children. ($1,000,000 over two years) 
  • The National Center on Domestic Violence, Trauma, and Mental Health at Hektoen Institute of Medicine—to build on its unique Substance Use Coercion Toolkit to increase attention to the problem and develop tools that health care providers can use to address it. ($346,261)
  • The National Academy for State Health Policy—to continue work under the FORE-supported State Policy Center for Opioid Use Disorder Treatment and Access, which is helping states implement policies and best practices to expand access to opioid use disorder treatment. ($634,385) 

Contact: Myrna Manners at 718.986.7255 or mmanners@mannersdotson.com.

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