Programs within the Vulnerable Populations Portfolio have four elements in common:

• They offer an opportunity to improve health by taking a fresh approach to a long standing problem.
• They address poor health status in the context of other factors like housing, education and poverty.
• They make fundamental changes in how services are organized and delivered.
• They address the lack of policy, financing, or service integration among local service providers and state and federal agencies.

Along with learning from and disseminating information about existing programs within the Vulnerable Populations Portfolio, we will explore new opportunities in the following areas:

Helping to Meet Emerging Health Needs of Communities. Rapid demographic changes throughout the United States require new approaches that can meet the health needs of low-income communities.

As the American population ages, communities are ill-prepared to meet the long-term care needs of older people. Through Community Partnerships for Older Adults, RWJF fosters local relationships that improve long-term care and supportive services systems to meet the current and future needs of older adults in 19 communities.

We also help new immigrants and refugees transition to life in the United States. A new program called New Routes to Community Health will use the power of community radio in partnership with immigrant-led organizations to discover innovative ways to address the health needs of new Americans.

Identifying Smarter, Cost-Effective Ways to Address Problems of the Most Vulnerable. We are interested in interventions that cut across multiple service systems and result in lasting changes in the health of vulnerable people.

Through Community Oriented Correctional Health Services, RWJF is helping communities around the country connect the health care provided in local correctional centers with health care provided in the community. This model of service demonstrates the kinds of efforts we fund that work effectively across systems, and is applicable to other vulnerable groups.

Seeking New and Different Partners to Expand Our Reach. To meet the health needs of vulnerable populations, we work with public and private funding partners and other key stakeholders, including partners outside of the traditional health and health care system.

For example, through the Green House Project, we are fostering a radical departure from traditional skilled nursing homes and assisted living facilities. Green House homes are residences for six to 10 people who require skilled nursing care that alter the size, design and organization of the traditional nursing home to create a warm community that offers residents privacy, autonomy, support, and a place to call home.

Taking Smart Innovations to New Communities. The Vulnerable Populations Portfolio includes several successful models developed at the community level that are now being replicated in new communities.

Early Detection and Intervention to Prevent Psychosis in Adolescents and Young Adults identifies young people in the very early stages of mental illness and ensures that they get appropriate, immediate treatment. This effort, which started in Portland, Maine and received initial funding through the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Local Funding Partnerships  program, is now a national program being replicated in four more cities. We expect that this replication will produce clinical evidence that validates the routine and widespread use of an early detection and treatment approach to prevent psychosis in adolescents and young adults

To receive e-mail notification when RWJF releases new calls for proposals, sign up for RWJF Funding Alert E-mails or add a feed of CFPs to your news reader. (Help: what are news feeds?)

What We Don't Fund

• We will not provide funding for efforts that do not incorporate the social factors that drive health status as part of their proposed model.
• We do not fund documentaries, research, programs that address a single medical condition, or provide core support for free or safety net clinics, disease management models, or well tested models whose effectiveness has already been established and that have been widely disseminated.
• While RWJF awards most of its grants in response to calls for proposals, we also award grants in response to unsolicited proposals in our Vulnerable Populations Portfolio.

We follow Foundation-wide guidelines for what we don't fund.

Last update: April 2007

Learn more about our strategy and the issues we are seeking to address in this area:

• Download our complete overview