Health Affairs

I have been scanning the blogs listed on our GrantWatch Blogroll to the right and wanted to point out some posts that are worth looking at.

Check out Matt Sundeen’s informative August 5, 2010, post “To Be Seen Whether Other States Follow Missouri’s Vote against Health Reform,” on the Colorado Trust’s Community Connections Blog. Sundeen, who is senior program officer for health policy at the foundation, which is located in Denver, writes about Proposition C, a Missouri ballot proposal, approved by 71 percent of voters in an August primary election, and a petition drive to put a similar proposal on the ballot in Colorado’s general election in November 2010. Prop C “attacks the controversial individual mandate requirement” (contained in the federal health reform law) to buy health insurance. Sundeen makes some insightful points about these efforts.

Have you ever heard the radio ad from Novartis, the pharmaceutical company, about the woman who contracted dengue fever? Well, now you can get more information on this tropical disease in “Where in the World is Dengue?” the title of an August 12, 2010, post by intern Rachael Holmes on google.org blog. She mentions an effort by google.org grantee HealthMap and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) called DengueMap. Did you know that there have been twenty-eight cases of people catching dengue in Florida since 2009?

Jennifer Chubinski asks in her August 19, 2010, post, “Will the Health Foundation [of Greater Cincinnati] Win Marlboro Researcher of the Year?” This post, on the foundation’s blog that is called simply “The Health Foundation,” talks about this funder’s “belief in sharing openly all of the public opinion polling data collected by [its] Health Issues Polls.” She points out, “We cannot just release the data we like best.” She explains why to foundation-watchers. Chubinski is director, health data improvement, at the Health Foundation, which funds in Cincinnati and twenty surrounding counties in Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio.

The John A. Hartford Foundation’s Health AGEnda Blog contains a July 22, 2010, post by program officer Amy Berman titled “Visionary Takes the Helm at CMS.” She writes about the appointment of Don Berwick of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) as the new administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Hartford was an early funder of a project that turned into the institute. Berman writes, “Years ago the Foundation provided the seed money that Berwick and his colleagues used to start” the IHI. And the rest is history, as they say. For more blog fodder on Berwick, read a post by Chris Fleming, social media manager at Health Affairs, called “Berwick to Head CMS without Senate Confirmation (updated),” (posted July 7, 2010).

The Rasmuson Foundation’s Reflect.Share.Blog has an August 16 post about its fourteenth annual Educational Tour of Alaska for Grantmakers. This Anchorage-based foundation each year “invites a small group of grantmakers from the South 48 to visit Alaska.” Rasmuson wants other funders to learn about the state and philanthropic opportunities there, blogger Jordan Marshall says. Among this year’s guests is Luis Urbiñas, president of the Ford Foundation. Read about the health-related organizations the visitors saw. And read a remembrance of former U.S. Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK), including a mention of his role in forming the Denali Commission, a federal agency. (The funeral for Stevens, who died in a plane crash earlier in August, was held this week.) The commission has several programs; read about its health facilities program here.

“A Game-Changing Approach: No New Cases of AIDS in Atlanta” is an August 12, 2010, post published on the Council on Foundations’ Re: Philanthropy blog. In it, Ray Knott of the new Atlanta AIDS Partnership discusses its new campaign called A Community without AIDS: No New Cases. He mentions the roles of the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta and United Way of Metropolitan Atlanta, as well as those of former U.S. surgeon general David Satcher and Sandy Thurman, a former White House AIDS czar, in establishing No New Cases. Here is some more information, from the community foundation’s Web site, about the Atlanta AIDS Partnership.

Have a good weekend!

This entry was posted on Friday, August 20th, 2010 at 12:55 pm and is filed under AIDS, Global Health, GrantWatch, Health Care for the Elderly, Health Insurance Coverage, Health Philanthropy, Health Reform, Smoking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.