Health Affairs

There is quite a bit of news of foundation people, including the announced retirement of Karen Davis from the Commonwealth Fund (a year from now), so we are trying to catch you up now. Watch for more people news in the February print issue of Health Affairs. Kathy Annette started her new position as president [...]

Overuse of antibiotics and antibiotic resistance are serious problems that many people seem unaware of. Witness those who go into a physician’s office with a bad cold and insist upon being prescribed an antibiotic. A cold is caused by a virus, and antibiotics are ineffective on viruses. In today’s post, GrantWatch Blog looks at some [...]

An e-alert describing a new report caught my eye. Who would have anticipated these results? The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), which announced back in 2007 that it would commit at least $500 million to reversing the childhood obesity problem by 2015, funded the work that led to the report (described below) about the effects on business [...]

It’s time to let you know of the most-read GrantWatch Blog posts during September—in case you missed them when they first came out. (1) “Philanthropy People Post: Who Is Working Where, Who Has Been Appointed to a Board,” by Health Affairs Senior Editor/GrantWatch, Lee-Lee Prina (September 8). Periodically, I write a blog post focused on people. [...]

Why did the Duke Endowment decide to select disease prevention as one of its three major funding areas in health care? Why would a private foundation invest in programs and infrastructure to prevent disease when the number of uninsured is growing and there is not enough funding available to treat people burdened with chronic disease?  [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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.! [...]

Apr. 4-10 is National Public Health Week, I found out when reading Yahoo’s health reform Twitter feed. The American Public Health Association (APHA) is spearheading the week’s activities. The week’s theme this year is “Safety Is No Accident: Live Injury-Free.” Following is a selected sampling of what some foundations are funding in public health. Do [...]

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 [...]

Below, we list the three most-read posts of the month. Take a look in case you missed one of these when the original tweet or e-alert was sent out. 1. “Update on What Foundations Have Been Doing in Oral Health Care” (Jan. 27, 2011). Read about the efforts of a number of foundations all over [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

More than 30 million uninsured people will acquire either public or private insurance over the next five years as a result of the Affordable Care Act of 2010. What does this mean for foundations promoting healthier communities by investing in increased access to health care? In short, it means new opportunities, especially for foundations that [...]

Here a few more blog posts I came across that you may want to check out. Global Health And Development “The Problem That Nobody Wants to Think About,” Louis Boorstin, Nov. 19, on the Foundation Blog of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Boorstin is the deputy director of water, sanitation, and hygiene at the [...]

Using Political Tactics and Strategies at the State Level to Achieve a Ban on Smoking in Indoor Public Places and Workspaces  As a foundation committed to shaping health policy, we at the Sunflower Foundation made a decision to fund a public policy campaign as a special initiative, rather than a grant program, primarily because there was no nonprofit organization [...]

A piece on the potential health-related effects of Arizona’s new immigration law is the most-read GrantWatch Blog post since the blog debuted on March 16. Other posts on the most-read list focus on “bending the cost curve” and foundation activities regarding health reform and primary care. Here are the top five posts:  Arizona’s Immigration Law: Bad for Health by Roger Hughes [...]

The following items on a spectrum of topics have come across my desk recently, and you may want to check them out. I have listed them, along with the links, under the relevant subject headings. Health Care for the Elderly The MacArthur Research Network on an Aging Society “is an interdisciplinary group of scholars who [...]

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Pledged $10 Billion in a Call for a Decade of Vaccines In case you missed this announcement, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation said that it “will commit $10 billion over the next 10 years to help research, develop and deliver vaccines for the world’s poorest countries.” The press release [...]