Health Affairs

This blogger, a former president of a foundation, writes that the value of public health infrastructure is sometimes forgotten. Investing in our public health infrastructure saves lives. That’s the bottom-line message of a recent Health Affairs article entitled Evidence Links Increases in Public Health Spending to Declines in Preventable Deaths. Its authors lay out the... Read the rest of this entry »

Here is a round-up of some “people news” at foundations and public charities around the country from the past few months. I have included staff and board of trustee changes and other news. Gary Cohen has been named chair of the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) Foundation’s board. Cohen is executive vice president... Read the rest of this entry »

Read below about some comings and goings at foundations around the country. Abraham Daniels has joined the Sierra Health Foundation. He is in charge of the foundation’s new health initiative that aims to strengthen the main health care safety net in the Sacramento, California, region, according to Sierra’s newsletter. Most recently, Daniels was director of... Read the rest of this entry »

This interesting and readable report is on the website of the Maternal Health Task Force, which I describe below. I thought the report was a must-read for grant-seekers in global health. Following are some highlights from the report with a few added comments of my own and some relevant links. Just a few funders are... Read the rest of this entry »

Below we have listed the three most-read posts. Take a look in case you missed them when the original tweets and e-alerts mentioning them were sent out. 1. “Southern Foundations Discuss PACE: Comprehensive Care to Help Elderly Age in Place,” by Tina Markanda (May 6). Markanda, a program officer at the Duke Endowment, writes about... Read the rest of this entry »

Read about a Blue Shield of California Foundation project to educate Californians about the federal health reform law. According to the April 2011 Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation Health Tracking Poll, public opinion on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) continues to be split. Four in ten feel favorably about the law, and... Read the rest of this entry »

“Philanthropy at the Intersection of Health and the Environment,” by Karla Fortunato and Kathy Sessions of the Health and Environmental Funders Network (HEFN), was released earlier this month in the May issue of Health Affairs, a thematic issue on “environmental challenges for health.” The Kresge Foundation provided funding for the journal issue on this important... Read the rest of this entry »

We list below the three most-read posts during the month. Take a look in case you missed one of these when the original tweet or e-alert went out. 1. “Foundation Blogs Round-up: Community Clinics, Health Reform, Health IT, & More,” by Lee-Lee Prina (March 31). First on the most-read list during April was a selected... Read the rest of this entry »

For those who want to change jobs or find a job, here is a selected sampling of positions that appear to be still open. Please note that I am only mentioning here a few pertinent details. I have put links to URLs for fuller descriptions of the positions, with all of the caveats, limitations, etc.!... Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s another quick listing of recent foundation-related blog posts that you may want to check out. Community Clinics “Clinics Get Boost from Foundation,” Daniel Weintraub, in California Health Report, Mar. 16. In this blog, part of HealthyCal.org (a nonprofit journalism project funded by the California Endowment), Weintraub writes about the recent $7 million that the... Read the rest of this entry »

This is the second in a series of short posts on my trip to Los Angeles to cover the Grantmakers In Health (GIH) Annual Meeting earlier this month. Humans need physical activity as much as they need food. Unfortunately, they have no internal prompt to be active, and they are programmed to be sedentary, said... Read the rest of this entry »

Drew Altman is the 2011 recipient of Grantmakers In Health’s (GIH) Terrance Keenan Leadership Award in Health Philanthropy. Here, I focus on his remarks at a Mar. 3 luncheon at the GIH Annual Meeting, in Los Angeles, which I attended. P.S. GrantWatch Blog just marked its one-year anniversary. We hope that you enjoy the posts,... Read the rest of this entry »

The Grantmakers in Health (GIH) Behavioral Health Funders Network caught the Hollywood bug at the annual meeting of GIH, held in Los Angeles in early March. At a breakfast meeting with John O’Brien, senior advisor on health care financing at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the network presented its Top-Ten Things... Read the rest of this entry »

René Cabral-Daniels is the former director of the Public-Philanthropic Partnership Initiative at the Council on Foundations. She recently became chief of staff at the National Patient Advocate Foundation. If you define philanthropy as Council on Foundations President and CEO Steve Gunderson does—as “a strategic investment in social change,” it is clear that initiating and sustaining... Read the rest of this entry »

Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, president and chief executive officer of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), sent out a Letter to the Field on Dec. 14. The letter’s audience was RWJF grantees and partners (and for “the nation’s largest philanthropy devoted solely to the public’s health,” that encompasses a big group). Here is some of what she... Read the rest of this entry »

In commemoration of World AIDS Day, which was earlier this week, I list here some items on HIV/AIDS that have come across my desk. You may want to check them out. New Report: U.S. Philanthropic Support to Address HIV/AIDS in 2009, Funders Concerned About AIDS (FCAA), released Nov.16. The Ford Foundation and UNAIDS provided funding... Read the rest of this entry »

One of the most important unanswered questions about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 is whether it will deliver on its promise to bend the cost curve. The law includes an array of provisions to rein in spiraling costs. These include eliminating cost barriers to effective prevention and screening measures in health insurance... Read the rest of this entry »

On the six-month anniversary of the enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, we present a selected sampling of what some foundations are doing to help out as reform is being implemented. Next week on GrantWatch Blog, watch for more about foundation efforts on health reform! Thanks much to Lauren LeRoy and her staff at... Read the rest of this entry »

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... Read the rest of this entry »

Our discussions at the recent health funders’ retreat at Brandeis University drove home an important point. The Affordable Care Act is a lot more than a series of provisions to assure access to health care coverage for millions of uninsured Americans. The new health reform law creates opportunities to develop fundamental and complementary payment and... Read the rest of this entry »