At The Duke Endowment, we seek to improve the health status of the communities we serve and promote health equity for disadvantaged populations. This objective, which I believe is broadly shared, is challenged by the reality that unmet needs within our existing health care system far outweigh private philanthropy’s resources. Unfortunately, this gap continues to widen. Over time, we have seen greater health disparities while health care spending increases at an unsustainable pace.

The Duke Endowment focuses on identifying areas of investment where we can demonstrate how fundamental changes in our approach to care can yield the greatest returns. This strategy led us to explore how we can best care for individuals living with serious illness—a health condition that has a high risk of mortality, often leads to a decline in quality of life, and causes increasing strain on family caregivers.

In the Carolinas, health care systems and payers are investing in developing innovative practices and trying to understand their ability to outperform the current standard of care. While promising practices are emerging, we lack the infrastructure to align our efforts and identify shared priorities that focus our resources on areas of the greatest opportunity. Supporting health innovation that is scalable and sustainable requires a pragmatic approach to the inclusive design, testing, and rigorous evaluation needed to drive system reform.

With this in mind, The Duke Endowment has partnered with major stakeholders in the Carolinas to establish the Carolinas Health Innovation Institute, a resource for identifying shared priorities and aligning resources to accelerate reform.

This is where I believe private philanthropy can have the greatest impact. We can take risks, identifying and investing in promising and innovative practices to demonstrate their viability to the marketplace. Philanthropy can contribute to developing an understanding of what works and what doesn’t, capturing these learnings and sharing them to accelerate progress. Our sector can develop a knowledge and evidence base that directly informs and guides systems change.

Read the full article about funding healthcare systems by Lin Hollowell at Grantmakers In Health.