Interest In Early Childhood Health Leads To Three Funders Working Together

For a combined 335 years, United Hospital Fund (UHF), the Altman Foundation, and the New York Community Trust (NYCT) have provided grants to improve the health and well-being of New York City residents. Although the three organizations have different structures—UHF is an independent, nonprofit, research and philanthropic organization; Altman, a private foundation; and the NYCT, a community foundation—over the past nine months, they have united to address the social, environmental, and economic causes of poor health in early childhood. The resulting effort, Partnerships for Early Childhood Development, holds important lessons on how creative, flexible, and collaborative grant making can result in a ground-breaking initiative, with greater scale and scope than could be achieved individually. It also serves as an example of how grantmakers can model collaboration as they promote cross-sector partnerships among their grantees. Focus On Nonmedical Threats Poverty-related social and environmental factors during the first five years of life can interfere with a child’s physical growth and brain development, resulting in poor outcomes over the long term in health, education, and well-being. One pathway to preventing and reducing such adversity in early childhood is to build the capacity of pediatric primary care providers to identify nonmedical threats to a young child’s health, and to connect the family to appropriate social services. This is challenging work that demands th...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - Category: Health Management Authors: Tags: Featured GrantWatch Health Professionals Organization and Delivery Children early childhood Health Care Delivery Health Philanthropy New York City Nonmedical Determinants pediatrics Physicians Primary Care Social Determinants of Source Type: blogs