The Health Foundation of Greater Cincinnati recently awarded 21 Cincinnati organizations with more than $800,000 to pursue programs designed to improve people’s health. The Foundation also granted an additional $290,000 for 22 other projects that fit better with some of the Foundation’s other funding programs. In all, 44 proposals were funded for a total of more than $1.1 million.
The grants are round one of the Foundation’s “Launching Solutions: Seizing New Opportunities in Health” initiative that focuses on providing the public with access to health and prevention services.
The Health Foundation opened its doors in January 1998, not as a health care provider, but as a provider of services to nonprofits that have needs for education, consultation and technical assistance in addition to grant money.
The “Launching Solutions” grant process began in February when the Foundation received 126 letters of intent from organizations in Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky. Twenty-six of those organizations were asked to submit grant proposals; last week, 21 of those projects were approved for funding. The approved projects range from integrated care and prevention to healthy eating and health care reform.
“There are a lot of wonderful health care providers out there that would like to do things differently,” says Dr. Pat O’Connor, VP and chief operating officer of the Foundation. “The Health Foundation is here to serve as a catalyst for change and improvement for the providers.”
The Foundation awards grants to nonprofits through different initiatives, so a few of the new grantees have received assistance from the Foundation in the past.
But many of them are new recipients, and there are more new recipients this year than before.
Churches Active in Northside,
Gabriel’s Place and
Family Promise of Northern Kentucky are new grantees.
In the next six months or so, the organizations will begin their projects and implement them in the community, says O’Connor.
The Foundation has worked with organizations on prevention projects, but it is now emphasizing three
National Prevention Plan areas : preventing tobacco use, drug abuse and excessive alcohol use; healthy eating; and mental and emotional wellbeing. Health care providers don’t traditionally do prevention, in part because others organizations and programs play a much bigger role, says O’Connor.
The second round of “Launching Solutions” began in September. It emphasizes prevention and creating new Cincinnati area primary care treatment capacity by 2014.
There will be a lot of people who didn’t have coverage before the Affordable Care Act who will want health care services, and getting appointments will be an issue, says O’Connor. In the second round, the Foundation will be able to work with nonprofit health care providers and help them expand their capacity for primary care treatment.
“Launching Solutions” grantees:
- Advocates for Ohio’s Future (Public Children Services Association of Ohio), $25,000
- Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater Cincinnati, $60,000
- Center for School-based Mental Health Programs Miami University, $50,000
- Children’s Home of Cincinnati, $50,000
- Churches Active in Northside, $35,700
- Cincinnati Health Network, Inc., $50,000
- Community Mental Health Center, $39,250
- Family Promise of Northern Kentucky, $10,000
- First Step Home, $75,000
- Gabriel’s Place (Diocese Southern Ohio), $12,000
- Greater Cincinnati Behavioral Health Services, $49,070
- Hamilton County Mental Health and Recovery Services Board, $100,000
- Henry Hosea House, $35,000
- Legal Action Center, $47,500
- LifePoint Solutions, $25,000
- Ohio Citizen Advocates for Chemical Dependency Prevention & Treatment & Ohio Alliance of Recovery Providers, $17,200
- PARACHUTE: Butler County CASA, $25,500
- Santa Maria Community Services, $25,000
- Sidestreams (Green Umbrella), $17,000
- St. Joseph Orphanage, $35,000
- Urban Appalachian Council, $30,000
By Caitlin Koenig
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