The problem of heroin overdoses and other opioid addictions is frequently in the news these days. See this recent New York Times article on an innovative program in a Massachusetts city to get addicts into treatment.
My June 2015 GrantWatch column (free access) looks at some examples of foundation funding around the United States in the area of substance use prevention.
I start with some background information on the problem of drug overdose in the United States (see an alarming statistic), the heroin epidemic, and more. Here are just some of the foundation-funded projects included in the column.
The Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, a major player in the private foundation world in substance use prevention, allocates $10 million a year to prevention and early intervention efforts. It now focuses on using the evidence-based Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT) approach for teens.
The New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, a statewide community foundation, received funding from a generous donor to reduce the burden of alcohol, drugs, and tobacco. It is cofunding a three-year effort with the Hilton Foundation to help young people.
Read this CNN article on New Hampshire’s drug epidemic. It looks like these two funders’ help is needed.
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s (RWJF’s) Public Health Law Research, a national program based at Temple University, includes Alcohol, Tobacco, and Other Drugs as one of its key topics. In fact, Johns Hopkins University has been one of the grantees for this topic; researchers there published a recent peer-reviewed article in Health Affairs on the topic of prescription drug monitoring programs and physicians’ knowledge and use of these state databases.
Citing the words of a judge who was a guest GrantWatch blogger, I also discuss the merits of drug treatment courts. The Kalamazoo Community Foundation, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Kresge Foundation, and others have helped support drug courts in Kalamazoo County, Michigan.
The Open Society Foundations funded a 2015 report advocating for medication-assisted treatment (such as methadone) for heroin and opioid addiction. And California HealthCare Foundation (CHCF) convened a meeting of leaders of community clinics, health plans, government agencies, and integrated health systems to figure out a “menu of approaches” to manage the care of patients with high-dose opioid dependency who seek care at safety-net providers. Read about the March 2015 report from that meeting.
West Virginia is “plagued” by prescription drug abuse, according to a press release from a Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation grantee. Read about the interesting work of the grantee, the Family Medicine Foundation of West Virginia (not a philanthropic foundation!).
See this CNN report about injectable drug abuse in Appalachia. A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report, according to CNN, states that such abuse “has caused hepatitis C infection rates to more than triple” in Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia.
The Key Personnel Changes section is short in this column. However, you may or may not know that Margaret Laws has left CHCF after many years. Read about her new job, which she will start next month.
May 2015 GrantWatch column: children’s health
My May 2015 GrantWatch column (free access) mentions several foundations’ efforts to improve kids’ health.
After citing a couple of examples of children’s health in the news, I discuss several projects to help school-aged children. These include a Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana Foundation program to combat childhood obesity; Agua4All, a pilot project funded by the California Endowment, the Weingart Foundation, and others to bring safe drinking water to disadvantaged communities and schools around the Golden State; a New York State Health Foundation report on school-based health centers; and more.
Making sure children have health insurance is another concern. I mention three foundation-funded publications on that subject. For example, read about the RWJF-supported report on state-level trends in children’s health insurance. The State Health Access Data Assistance Center (SHADAC), based at the University of Minnesota, published this April 2014 report.
On the subject of health promotion, one of the examples I cite is the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s 2014 Kids Count Data Book, the twenty-fifth in a series of annual reports looking at child well-being.
As for mental health, the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky provided partial funding of “Safe and Sound: Raising Emotionally Healthy Children in a Stressful World,” a program on Kentucky Educational Television.
What are foundations doing in oral health for children? I mention a few examples, including a Cigna Foundation effort to help underserved children in four California counties.
In Key Personnel Changes, read about the executive director of the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan Foundation and Andy Hyman, a senior program officer at the RWJF who passed away in February. Hyman coauthored a 2009 Health Affairs GrantWatch peer-reviewed article titled “What Do We Really Know About Foundations’ Funding of Mental Health?”
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