Health philanthropy’s attention has shifted over the past two decades from a reliance on health care access work to a deeper look at the factors affecting individual health status (social determinants of health) and, concurrently, at the factors supporting population health (a culture of health).

This social determinants work in areas such as safe and affordable housing, transportation access, and high-quality K-12 education requires a different set of philanthropic skills and networks. Developing these skills and networks within the walls of traditional health funders is a major challenge. To date, however, too much of health philanthropy’s work in these areas has been in isolation from non-health funders on both the private and governmental sides.

On October 11 and 12, 2018, seventy-five rural-serving leaders gathered in Atlanta, Georgia, to begin to close the chasm between rural private and public health care funders and organizations working in those same rural communities on issues related to community development, housing, and older adults aging in place, for examples. The event was the first Southern Convening of Rural Philanthropists: Bridging the Public and Private Divide.

Representatives from eleven southern states, along with Washington, D.C., and Atlanta-based federal officials, joined together to examine health data within the context of unique philanthropic partnerships such as those with Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) and the Two Georgias Initiative of the Healthcare Georgia Foundation. Similarly, representatives from District 4 of the US Department of Health and Human Services (out of Atlanta) and its Regional Director Renee Ellmers; Federal Reserve Board and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention representatives; and leadership and directors of state-based Offices of Rural Health in Alabama, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia were brought together—the majority for the first time.

The gathering made clear that while private and public health funders are often working in the same southern rural communities without enough alignment or engagement, an even bigger gap is the disconnect between CDFIs and rural health funders. CDFIs, which use private and public revenue sources to provide financing options in underserved (and often rural) markets, have little historic relationship with private rural health funders—although both focus on helping rural communities seek and sustain growth. A strong consensus developed from the conference sessions that CDFIs are interested in basic primers on rural health infrastructure, the health policy landscape in rural areas, and the interests of rural health funders.

Meeting participants had a strong desire to leave this convening with plans for action. Throughout the meeting, data-fueled a common vision for healthier communities to seek. Meeting participants used a request-and-offer format to build collaborative next steps that would propel the group forward.

Another important plan is to build a system for learning and sharing that information. Representatives from financial institutions, philanthropy, housing, and federal and state governments all saw the need to understand more about each other’s purposes, potentials, and operations. Financial institutions need to know more about how to build health into their decisions. Philanthropies want to understand how to combine health and financing with grantmaking. Various participants offered to lead logistics, content, and communications components of the learning system.

Read the full article about health partnerships by Allen J. Smart and Karen J. Minyard at Health Affairs.