September 11, 1998
The W.K. Kellogg Foundation today announced Community Voices: Health Care for the Underserved, a five-year, $55 million national initiative to improve health care access and quality. It is the largest start-up initiative in the foundation's 68-year history and is the single largest philanthropic effort aimed at improving health care access and quality in the U.S.
The foundation is launching the initiative to help ensure the survival of safety-net providers and to strengthen community support services given the unlikely prospect of achieving universal health coverage in the next five years. Building up from the community level, the initiative will give the underserved a voice to help make health care access and quality part of the national debate. The foundation will support 13 local learning laboratories with communications, research and technical assistance to help educate the public and policy makers on the importance of improving health care to the underserved. Each learning laboratory will seek matching funds to greatly expand the reach of the initiative.
"Bold, sustained action is needed to develop new ways to improve access to quality health care," said Dr. Henrie Treadwell, Kellogg Foundation Program Director for Community Voices. "The size and scope of Community Voices reflects the compelling need to improve and include 70 million Americans who are currently under-served into the best health care system the nation has to offer. The community level is the place to start this transformation."
Thirteen local learning laboratories form the cornerstone of Community Voices. These include front-line health care providers treating people who have no health insurance or have limited opportunities to take advantage of medical advances and disease prevention strategies. The learning laboratories were selected to serve some of the hardest-to-reach populations including poor urban areas, immigrant health, native American health care, rural care and the homeless.
The learning laboratories will conduct a range of activities aimed at reducing the number of people without health care coverage and to utilize community-based programs to reach those most often slipping through the cracks of the health care safety net. The foundation will also provide each laboratory with a nationally recognized resource team of consultants to assist with communications, public policy and evaluation.
The 13 learning laboratories were selected from more than 80 applications and site visits. The underserved includes the working poor, individual or families with public insurance, and the 40 million Americans without health insurance.
The W.K. Kellogg Foundation was established in 1930 "to help people help themselves through the practical application of knowledge and resources to improve their quality of life and that of future generations." Its programming activities center around the common vision of a world in which each person has a sense of worth; accepts responsibility for self, family, community, and societal well-being; and has the capacity to be productive, and to help create nurturing families, responsive institutions, and health communities.
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