RCHN CHF Will Sunset in 2021
Since our founding in 2005, the RCHN Community Health Foundation has been dedicated to supporting and nurturing the community health center movement. Though modest in size, the Foundation has developed a robust voice in community health improvement, undertaking ambitious programs in policy research, policy communication, and grant-making to improve health and health care. We are so proud of the many milestones we’ve accomplished, and our impact and reach in our years of dedication to and collaboration with community health centers.
As we neared our 15th anniversary, our Board of Directors recognized that our greatest achievements are reflected in the work of our grantees and the broader health center program, and determined that our mission would be best served by a purposeful spend-down, awarding our remaining resources to a small number of organizations that share the Foundation’s commitment to supporting community health centers and healthcare access and equity.
As the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded and we accelerated our giving to provide emergency resources, we knew we had made the right decision to sunset and provide larger and longer-term funding commitments. Our plans will allow us to invest now in significant initiatives that will help support the future of the health center program when it is needed most.
In 2021, major gifts and grants will be made to three organizations whose work is closely aligned with the Foundation’s mission, complemented by smaller awards to several other organizations. These final awards reflect our dedication to having a meaningful and sustained impact on community health, beyond the Foundation’s lifespan.
While our physical office will close in June 2021, Foundation resources such as CHroniCles will continue to be available online for the foreseeable future, and plans are underway to migrate our policy briefs and related resources to partner organizations and institutions.
You can read our press release on the sunset here.
More about our legacy awards to
Milken Institute School of Public Health, George Washington University – $7 million to sustain and expand the Geiger Gibson Program in Community Health Policy
Key milestones of our singular collaboration are found here.
National Association of Community Health Centers, Inc. (NACHC) – $5 million to establish the new Center for Community Health Innovation
Community Health Care Association of New York State (CHCANYS) – $1 million to fund the PCA’s Workforce Institute.
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Geiger Gibson Policy Issue Brief – Building Community-Oriented Medicaid Managed Care: Charting a Path Toward Reform
A new policy issue brief examines the Episcopal Health Foundation’s (TX) $10 million Texas Community-Centered Health Homes (CCHH) Initiative and its implications for Medicaid managed care policy and practice.
As implemented across participating community health center sites in Texas, the CCHH model shows the value of using health care as the major initial entry point into better health for patients and communities. The researchers interviewed five CCHH grantees and found that when community centers received funding to support community-wide health improvement activities, they were able to incorporate broader health improvement innovations alongside basic primary care and bring real health change to underserved communities. The authors discuss the avenues for making community health improvement a core feature of Medicaid managed care.
The report was produced in conjunction with Episcopal Health Foundation and authored by researchers from the Geiger Gibson Program in Community Health Policy at Milken Institute School of Public Health.
Read the press release and the report, “Building Community-Oriented Medicaid Managed Care: Charting a Path Toward Reform”
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Supporting Community Health Workers to Enhance Effectiveness of Behavioral Health-Primary Care Integration
In 2018, the Northwest Regional Primary Care Association (NWRPCA) launched an initiative to identify key principles, current best practices, and workforce development requirements to support the involvement of Community Health Workers/Promotores/as (CHW/Ps) in behavioral health-primary care (BH-PC) integration at Community/Migrant Health Centers (C/MHCs).
The PCA convened an advisory group and undertook a comprehensive literature review and a survey of the field as well as focus groups and informal conversations with colleagues around the country. Their findings are part of a new white paper, “Supporting Community Health Workers to Enhance Effectiveness of Behavioral Health-Primary Care Integration,” authored by Seth Doyle, Maribel Montes de Oca and Nathan Thomas of NWRPCA, Noelle Wiggins, Wiggins Health Consulting and Vision y Compromiso. Funding for this project was supported by a grant from the RCHN Community Health Foundation.
Read, “Supporting Community Health Workers to Enhance Effectiveness of Behavioral Health-Primary Care Integration”
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The CHroniCles Beat: Community Health Centers and the COVID-19 Vaccination Roll-out: A Close Look at Two Health Centers on the Front Lines
This time last year, sirens were a constant sound in New York City and elsewhere in the U.S. as the COVID-19 pandemic surged. While those who could stayed inside and worked from home, community health centers throughout the country did everything they could to keep their doors open and provide essential healthcare, in person or by pivoting rapidly to telehealth, and to add essential COVID-19 testing capacity. In January 2021 the news broke that vaccinations would soon be distributed, offering a way forward from a year marked with uncertainty.
For this CHroniCles Beat blog, we reached out to colleagues at Callen-Lorde Community Health Center (NY) and Community Health Center, Inc. (CT), to understand what the vaccine roll-out looked like on the ground and how community health centers are navigating this new pandemic-related challenge.
Read the blog, “Community Health Centers and the COVID-19 Vaccination Roll-out: A Close Look at Two Health Centers on the Front Lines”
Photo courtesy of Community Health Center, Inc. (CT). The photo was taken at their mass vaccination site in East Hartford, CT.
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Community Health Centers Tackle Population Health, Equity and Social Determinants
A new paper by the RCHN CHF team describes the Foundation’s Population Health initiative [2015-2020], summarizes the objectives and outcomes of supported projects, and documents the approaches to evaluation and shared learning. It concludes with a discussion of the need for population-focused approaches to health policy in the post-pandemic era.
Read the paper, “Community Health Centers Tackle Population Health, Equity and Social Determinants”
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ICYMI
Did you miss our recent policy webinar with experts Peter Shin, Sara Rosenbaum and Jessica Sharac, The Role of Community Health Centers as Public Health Emergency First Responders: One Year into the COVID-19 Pandemic? The full recording of the presentation and slides are available now.
A companion to the paper Community Health Centers Tackle Population Health, Equity and Social Determinants, Improving Population Health, Advancing Health Equity: 2017 – 2020 Projects, provides a summary and update of projects supported in the second cohort of our population health improvement initiative.
The Commonwealth has released a new issue brief titled The Economic and Employment Effects of Medicaid Expansion Under the American Rescue Plan, authored by Milken Institute School of Public Health colleagues Leighton Ku and Erin Brantley.
