Exploring Equitable Futures

Please note: In addition to a refreshed purpose and other updates, we changed the name of our open CFP funding opportunity from Pioneering Ideas for an Equitable Future CFP to Exploring Equitable Futures CFP on February 3, 2025.

Background

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) is taking bold leaps to transform health in our lifetime and pave the way, together, to a future where health is no longer a privilege, but a right.

We have set three ambitious goals for our work:

• Economic Inclusion for Family Wellbeing
• Equitable and Accountable Public Health and Healthcare Systems
• Healthy and Equitable Community Conditions

Making progress toward those Generational Goals requires changing the systems that underpin our society. Currently, those systems create and uphold inequity by placing more value on some lives than others, based on race, class, and other factors. To create a more equitable future, we must identify and dismantle structural racism in our systems. We must create space for health practitioners, community leaders, and researchers to rethink the way our systems work, dream up new possibilities, and put one foot in the future to anticipate opportunities or roadblocks that future may bring.

Through our Ideas for an Equitable Future team, we support visionary thinkers—scientists, anthropologists, engineers, technologists, creatives, and others—who are imagining what the world might look like in the next 10 to 100 years.With our funding, they explore how those futures may unfold in ways that could slow down or speed up our collective efforts to dismantle structural racism and improve health equity.

By applying this future-facing lens, our grantees are uncovering how emerging social, cultural, scientific, technological, environmental, and economic trends and forces could shape the future of health for everyone. They are also discovering and experimenting with cutting-edge ideas that have the potential to tear down barriers to health and wellbeing and reinvent our systems so that they work better for us all.

Learn more about RWJF’s Generational Goals and our focus on systems change.

Purpose

The purpose of this Exploring Equitable Futures call for proposals (CFP) is to support projects that seed new and unconventional ideas that could radically advance health equity for generations to come.

We aim to fund projects that:

• Explore the future by researching and experimenting with ideas that are ahead of the curve or at the edge of our collective imagination;
• Shine a light on the emerging trends and forces that are shaping our future for better or worse—and suggest ways to navigate them to mitigate harm and advance health equity;
• Dream big and challenge conventional wisdom to surface possibilities and uncover new paths to dismantle structural racism and build a more equitable future.

These projects should address one or more of RWJF’s Prioritized Systems.

We are particularly interested in projects that seed new and unconventional ideas within the Health Science Knowledge System—or that reimagine this system completely. At RWJF, we believe that the knowledge and evidence that’s needed to guide better decisionmaking, as well as policies that influence health, must include wisdom generated and shared by communities, including those that have been traditionally ignored or undervalued.With our grantees and partners, we are working to transform the way we produce, share, and use health evidence so that it is rooted in equity and justice. As such, we are interested in projects that explore questions such as, but not limited to:

• How might trends, such as artificial intelligence and decreasing trust in institutions impact efforts to transform the Health Science Knowledge System?
• How might a reimagined Health Science Knowledge System produce knowledge that advances health equity? In a desired future, who gets to frame research questions? How does research reflect the priorities and concerns of community members? What qualifies as evidence?
• How might new structures, processes, and incentives ensure the future Health Science Knowledge System produces, validates, disseminates, and applies evidence to improve health?

Learn more about the kinds of ideas funded in the past by the Ideas for an Equitable Future team at www.rwjf.org/ideasforthefuture.

Eligibility & Selection Criteria

Preference will be given to applicants that are tax-exempt under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code and are not private foundations or Type III supporting organizations. Applicant organizations must be based in the United States or its territories. Submissions from teams that include both U.S. and international members are eligible. 

We evaluate proposals for this funding opportunity based on the extent to which the proposed project seeds an idea that (1) is new and unconventional and (2) meaningfully advances health equity.  

Key Dates & Deadlines

Beginning February 3, 2025, proposals will be accepted on a rolling admission until October 15, 2025.  

• All applications submitted before October 15, 2025 at 3 p.m. ET, will be reviewed. 

We strive to get back to all applicants as quickly as possible. Depending on the volume of proposals received at any given time, applicants can expect to receive a response as early as one month and no later than six months as to whether their application has been accepted for further consideration or turned down. 

The Exploring Equitable Futures CFP will close annually on or about October 15 and reopen on or about February 1 in the next year.

Read the full call for proposals for information about the application process. 

Total Awards

Type of Award: Awards funded under this opportunity will be structured as grants.

Number of Awards: There is no set number of awards.

Amount of Award: There is no set award amount. You should request the amount of funding you will need to complete your proposed project—including direct and indirect costs—for the entire duration of your grant.    

Award Duration: Award periods are flexible though generally range from 24 to 36 months.