Giving Compass' Take:

• Grantmakers in Health share insights into effective health funding through the example and learnings of the Healthcare Anchor Network.

• How does this work align with greater health goals? How can funders maximize their impact on the healthcare system? 

• Learn about the importance of partnerships and collaborations in increasing healthcare access. 

In 2017, 30 U.S. health systems came together to form the Healthcare Anchor Network­. These systems together comprise more than 600 hospitals with a million employees. This unprecedented health system-led collaboration seeks to address the root causes of poor health through strategies that build inclusive and sustainable local economies (Healthcare Anchor Network, 2017).

In parallel, a group of funders, working in partnership with Grantmakers In Health (GIH), developed a health funder learning journey to understand this health care evolution and examine how hospitals and health systems can more effectively advance health equity in partnership with health funders.

With more than 5.6 million employees, expenditures of $780 billion and an estimated $400 billion in investment portfolios, health systems are significant anchor institutions. Around the country, they are increasingly recognizing that for them to fulfill their mission of improving health they must address the social, economic, and environmental root causes of poor health (Howard, 2015).

This journey illuminated many roles that we, as health funders and anchors ourselves, could play to support and accompany these institutions in advancing their anchor missions.

Here we highlight three that surfaced through our learning journey:

  • Convene: Funders are often seen as trusted partners and can help create or sustain this conversation among health system peers.
  • Convey: Funders can spur individual institutions to action by helping them define a powerful organizational imperative or “burning platform” for an anchor mission approach.
  • Co-invest: For anchor institutions to effectively leverage their hiring, purchasing, and investing capabilities, they need strong community partners and a local eco-system.

As funders, we need to leverage our roles to drive systems changes that will narrow and eliminate health inequities.

Read the full article about health funders by Monica Brown, Susie Lee,  Yanique Redwood, and Elizabeth Ripley at Grantmakers in Health.