The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is working to build a Culture of Health.
Since 1972, RWJF has supported research and programs to uncover the many factors that impact health, and enable people and communities to be as healthy as possible. Working alongside public health leaders, entrepreneurs, research scientists, policymakers and community leaders, the Foundation is committed to ensuring that everyone has a fair and just opportunity to achieve better health where we live, learn, work and play.
Black, Latino and Indigenous people have been disproportionately impacted from a health standpoint by the Covid-19 pandemic, and a new poll from NPR, RWJF, and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health finds that the same is true from an economic standpoint. The budget reconciliation measure being debated by Congress has the potential to helps millions of families and achieve an equitable economic recovery over the long term. In an op-ed for The Hill, RWJF President and CEO Richard Besser explains the policies that must be included in the final measure to help create an America in which skin color, income level, neighborhood, disability, occupation and immigration status no longer determine how long and how well people live.
In a letter to the editor of The Washington Post, RWJF President and CEO Richard Besser and President and Chief Executive of the NAACP Derrick Johnson describe Medicaid expansion as a historic opportunity that would result in higher rates of coverage, fewer premature deaths, narrowing of racial health disparities and increased economic activity. Yet 12 states continue to perpetuate the Medicaid coverage gap, denying 2.2 million people—disproportionately people of color and low incomes—quality healthcare coverage.
The FDA and CDC have already determined that third shots are necessary for the severely immunocompromised who derived little protection from their initial shots. But that does not mean boosters are necessarily coming for everyone. RWJF Executive Vice President Julie Morita pens that boosters notwithstanding, our main focus should be inoculating the unvaccinated, as they account for the overwhelming majority of COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths.
Melissa Blair
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation media@rwjf.org or (609) 627-5937
For general inquiries, please contact our main number:
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The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Foundation.
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