Supporting promising new ideas that address health and health care problems that intersect with social factors—housing, poverty, and inadequate education—and affect society’s most vulnerable people.

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ARRIERS TO IMPROVING HEALTH and health care intertwine with social factors (e.g., lack of housing, poor education, poverty, racial and ethnic discrimination) to make America’s most vulnerable people especially fragile. In 2004 we refined our approach to vulnerable populations by focusing on programs that work at the intersection of health and social factors to promote solutions that cut across multiple health and social service systems. Many of these programs target children and families, recent immigrants, the chronically homeless, prisoners who are re-entering society, those with multiple health problems, and frail elders. In 2004 the Foundation supported several initiatives with health and social factors as a single challenge:

• A grant to the Shreveport-Bossier Community Renewal (SBCR) will help rebuild one of Louisiana’s most troubled communities. SBCR is a faith-based, community-driven initiative aimed at improving the health and well-being of vulnerable families in impoverished and isolated neighborhoods. SBCR established resource centers in five targeted neighborhoods, trained over 500 community leaders in these neighborhoods, connected them with mobile health care services, and increased volunteerism across the city.
• The Foundation-supported Cash & Counseling program—that helps Medicaid recipients decide how best to use the benefit with the assistance of a financial counselor—expanded to 11 new states. Data gathered from an earlier three-state demonstration in Arkansas, Florida and New Jersey showed high levels of satisfaction among the program’s participants and appropriate use of the cash benefit. The data also showed that people who enrolled in the program were as healthy as, and more satisfied with their caregiving than those who received traditional Medicaid services.
• Continued support of Experience Corps® addressed health and illiteracy by organizing and training more than 1,500 seniors and retirees to serve as tutors for children in urban public schools and after-school programs in 13 cities. Research shows that Experience Corps boosts student academic performance, helps improve the success rates of schools and youth-serving organizations, strengthens ties between these institutions and surrounding neighborhoods, and enhances the well-being of its senior volunteers.
• In 2004 RWJF funded 11 new communities to develop plans for long-term care as part of the Community Partnerships for Older Adults program. These grantees join eight other communities leading a national renaissance in long-term care and supportive services systems.
• The Foundation made a significant change in the strategy of one of our largest national programs, Faith in Action®. Future funding will emphasize strengthening and providing more resources to existing coalitions.
• RWJF also joined an unprecedented collaboration of national foundations, nonprofit organizations and financial institutions to galvanize leadership and resources to bring an end to long-term homelessness over the next decade. The Partnership to End Long-Term Homelessness will dedicate more than $37 million in grants and loans to the Corporation for Supportive Housing, the National Alliance to End Homelessness and other groups working to end long-term homelessness.

In the coming year we will look for opportunities that further address health and social factors.