Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky reports putting 24 percent more money into grants last year than in 2012

The Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky made grants totaling $2,355,838 in 2013, a 24 percent increase over the 2012 total of $1,903,660, according to the annual report it released yesterday.

Last year was the first in which the foundation made grants for two major initiatives: Investing in Kentucky's Future, which it calls "a $3 million commitment to seven Kentucky communities where civic leaders have come together and committed to a process and a plan for collective impact on the future health of their children," and Promoting Responsive Health Policy, which tries to see that voices of under-represented populations are part of the health-policy conversation in Kentucky.

The first initiative's seven grantees are Fitness for Life Around Grant County, the Clinton County Schools (for the Healthy Hometown Coalition), the Foundation for Appalachian Kentucky (for the Perry County Health and Wellness Coalition), the Green River Area Development District (for the Partnership for a Healthy McLean County), the Kentucky Heart Foundation (for work in Boyd and Greenup counties), Kentucky River Community Care (for the Breathitt County Health Planning Council for Children) and the Louisville Metro Department of Health and Wellness (for the Coalition for Louisville Youth).

Under the policy initiative, the report says, grantees "are working to improve access to needed health care, support children's health, strengthen local public health and "increase the number of Kentuckians living in communities where workplaces are smoke-free." For a complete list of grants made by the foundation in 2013, click here. For a January press release about them, click here.

The foundation was established in 2001 to settle a lawsuit by then-Attorney General Ben Chandler against Anthem Inc. to recover the charitable assets that Anthem had gained in its merger with the old Kentucky Blue Cross/Blue Shield. The foundation's net assets grew to nearly $56.4 million last year, a 7.7 percent increase over the end of 2012.

The foundation is a non-profit philanthropy with a mission of addressing the unmet health-care needs of Kentuckians. It has invested more than $24 million in health-policy research and pilot-project grants that invests in communities and informs health policy through grant making, research and education. It says it is "committed to improving access to care, reducing health risks and disparities and promoting health equity."

The foundation also acts as a convener, through its annual Howard L. Bost Health Policy Forum, its "Health for a Change" workshops and webinars, funding of conferences held by others and meeting space at its new offices in eastern Jefferson County for more than 21 community and statewide organizations.

It also acts as a communicator, through its annual Kentucky Health Issues Poll and other research, and it funds independent health reporting by Kentucky Educational Television and the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues in the School of Journalism and Telecommunications at the University of Kentucky, which publishes Kentucky Health News.

Tweet