Health Affairs

The author is director of health policy at Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky. On May 7, the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky and the Kentucky Rural Health Association (KRHA) convened the Doing Care Differently in Rural Kentucky health policy conference. This one-day event, held the day before the National Rural Health Association’s annual meeting in... Read the rest of this entry »

The author, the CEO of Weight Watchers International, describes a new initiative that the company launched with the U.S. Conference of Mayors. Cities can apply now (please see below). Cities today face huge health challenges. For residents, cities are the guardians of public health. For municipal employees, cities serve as health care providers. In both cases, mayors... Read the rest of this entry »

Crowdfunding is hot. What is it, and why should funders of health services research keep an eye on its development? Let’s start with what crowdfunding is. The term itself is a variation on “crowdsourcing,” which entails putting out a problem (often a technological one) for input from either a select audience (such as one’s peers,... Read the rest of this entry »

GrantWatch Blog invited the author, who is director of the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics, and Policy, to write this post focused on the center’s telebriefing, which was held in November. He most recently wrote for Health Affairs in 2011 as lead author of an article on India’s vaccine deficit. On November 13 the Center... Read the rest of this entry »

This post, by my colleague Chris Fleming, originally appeared on Health Affairs Blog, which is GrantWatch Blog’s “big sister” blog here at the journal. On November 21, Health Affairs released a series of Web First articles profiling the winners of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) Young Leaders Awards, which were announced this Fall on... Read the rest of this entry »

This post is partially adapted from an October 1, 2012, post on the Health and Environmental Funders Network’s blog, Giving InSight. Public health concerns are a major part of escalating philanthropic attention to oil and gas extraction through hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” explained below.  In just fourteen months, more than forty foundations have joined a... Read the rest of this entry »

As a former state legislator and foundation CEO, I worry about how the majority opinion of Chief Justice John Roberts on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act of 2010 (National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius) may affect our approach to prevention programs. Funding environmental health may be the best way to go. In... Read the rest of this entry »

Two staffers at a Kentucky foundation report on a webinar held in July to address this important question. Today, grantmakers and some government agencies are encouraging public health departments and nonprofit health promotion organizations to “advocate for policy change,” but the line between permitted advocacy and prohibited lobbying is often unclear. The Centers for Disease... Read the rest of this entry »

A new GrantWatch article, “HIV/AIDS in African Children: The Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation and Baylor Response,” was released this week as part of the July 2012 issue of  Health Affairs. The issue has the theme “Assessing the [U.S.] President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief [PEPFAR].” The U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Department of Health and... Read the rest of this entry »

If you are taking some time off this week for Easter or Passover, you may want to dust off that resumé and apply for one of these positions. I have included a few interesting points about each position, but read the full position description for many more details. These jobs were posted on foundation websites... Read the rest of this entry »

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... Read the rest of this entry »

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... Read the rest of this entry »

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... Read the rest of this entry »

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.... Read the rest of this entry »

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? ... Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

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 »

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... Read the rest of this entry »