Posts Tagged ‘philanthropy’
Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is
Author : Cathy Ponitz
Aug 19th, 2009 | by
“Giving back to the community” is a pretty standard element of corporate strategy. And if it’s your mission to sell a product or service, it’s just practical to make that giving highly visible to as many people as possible.
However, when your business is to help people with poverty issues that deeply affect their lives and well-being, and your ability to serve them is challenged by the circumstances of their lives and communities, marketing is not the first consideration. You are compelled to go beyond business strategy to actually change those conditions directly. To put your money where your mouth is.
That’s the essential logic behind the CareSource Foundation.
Changing the Health Care Landscape
Our goal is to change the health care landscape for those who have the greatest challenges and the fewest resources. We know that diabetes, childhood obesity and asthma are rampant and costly…so we support programs that educate children and families on managing those conditions. We know that domestic violence and destructive behavior by young people are health issues as well as criminal issues, so we support innovative solutions for at-risk youth and help for domestic violence victims.
Mobile health and prescription access. Emergency shelters. Screenings, prenatal health, senior health, behavioral health. Investment in the health of every county in Ohio and the counties we serve in Michigan. Wherever we find an effective program that helps vulnerable populations with important health related issues, we look for ways to partner with them to find solutions.
Perhaps the greatest challenge in health care is its absence. Sadly, even with Medicaid and Medicare, about 11% of our state’s population has no health coverage at all. Although CareSource provides coverage for 765,000 Medicaid enrollees and the CareSource Foundation has invested more than $1.5 million in programs that stem the tide on significant health issues, more still needs to be done.
Taking Foundations to Another Level and Beyond
As we enter our third year as a foundation, we’ve decided that we can and should do more to support families as the nation recovers from this economic downturn. This year, we’ve developed a brand new concept called “Signature Grants” which are fundamentally inline with the programs we currently support but we’ve taken them to the next level. These large-scale grants will have numerous regional, state and/or national partners all focused on creating sustainable, high-impact change in one of two key areas: childhood obesity and/or the uninsured.
Unlike responsive grants, we actually solicit proposals that are geared toward making improvements in these predefined categories, thus offering yet another way for CareSource to impact change in the communities we serve. We believe this “outside of the box” thinking will encourage communities to work in tandem to focus on key issues that continually perpetuate the escalating costs of health care.
What We Suggest
What if all health care plans serving the underserved focused their “giving back” on the health of their own communities? Providing coverage, care and education, supporting innovations that make a difference in individual lives? What if they looked at issues that continually consume the increasingly scarce health care dollar and focus profits on impacting change?
It wouldn’t solve the structural dysfunctions in the health care system today…that’s the job of health care reform. But caring, compassionate help that empowers consumers to stay healthier and use resources well is not only the right thing to do. Long term, it will reduce costs and improve the quality of American lives. And that’s a benefit for everyone.
