The following resources are intended to help health systems to advance an anchor mission approach within their health institutions.
Featured resources
The Hospitals Aligned for Healthy Communities toolkit series is designed to provide hospital and health system leadership and department managers with the steps to begin to harness their everyday operations to drive community health and well-being.
The toolkit series was developed with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to accelerate a new model in healthcare that builds community health into core business practices.
Inclusive, Local Hiring Toolkit
This toolkit offers a guide for how to leverage hiring practices to advance inclusive, local job creation and career development for communities experiencing the greatest health and wealth disparities.
Impact Purchasing Toolkit
This toolkit showcases examples of how hospitals and health systems are supporting diverse and locally owned vendors and helping to incubate new community enterprises to fill supply chain gaps and drive local economic growth in their communities.
Place-based Investing Toolkit
This toolkit outlines place-based investing strategies that allow health systems to earn a financial return on their investments while producing a positive social, economic, or environmental impact within their geographical service areas.
The Anchor Mission Playbook
Written by Rush University Medical Center, with support from Chicago Anchors for a Strong Economy, the Civic Consulting Alliance, and The Democracy Collaborative, this playbook offers recommendations drawn from research carried out to help Rush University Medical Center align around its Anchor Mission. These findings are intended to help other hospitals and health systems accelerate their own efforts to drive institutional alignment with community needs.
Embracing an Anchor Mission
Written by Randy Oostra, CEO of ProMedica, with the support of David Zuckerman and Katie Parker from The Democracy Collaborative, this report offers an in-depth look at how ProMedica—a member of the Healthcare Anchor Network —aligned its institutional operations and clinical practice to better tackle the social determinants of health. From an innovative hospital-owned grocery store in a food desert to investments in preserving affordable housing, this playbook details the Toledo, Ohio-based health system’s decade-long journey to understand how their resources could be used for the wellbeing of the communities they serve.
Can Hospitals Heal America’s Communities?
Healthcare’s role in creating healthy communities through increasing access to quality care, research, and grantmaking is being complemented by a higher impact approach; hospitals and integrated health systems are increasingly stepping outside of their walls to address the social, economic, and environmental conditions that contribute to poor health outcomes, shortened lives, and higher costs in the first place. Can hospitals and health systems heal America’s communities?
Table of Contents
- Case Studies
- Infographics
- Tools for Defining the Organizational Imperative
- Resources for Advancing the Anchor Mission
- More Resources
Case Studies
Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Health System’s (FMOLHS) The Faith Fund
Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Health System’s (FMOLHS) partnered with Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Baton Rouge in October 2018 to launch The Faith Fund, a micro-loan investment fund to address a key driver of health: financial stability. In 2020, FMOLHS established the COVID-19 Faith Fund Emergency Income Stabilization Loan Program that enabled employees to borrow up to $3,000 at a 6% interest rate and pay it back over a two-year period to help financially stabilize individuals and families during the pandemic. In late 2020, FMOLHS the PayActiv program, which enables employees to access their pay immediately after earning…
Read or download Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Health System’s (FMOLHS) The Faith Fund
Kaiser Permanente’s Futuro Health
Kaiser Permanente’s Futuro Health initiative is explored in a new case study. The case study covers the program’s history, design and implementation. Futuro Health creates education journeys into allied health careers. Futuro Health’s model currently focuses on meeting the healthcare workforce needs of California but has the potential to be scaled across the country.
ProMedica’s Place-based Investment Program
ProMedica’s Place-based Investment Program is explored in a new case study. As an anchor institution, ProMedica is committed to focusing on upstream health needs and improving the economic prosperity of the communities it serves. ProMedica was a co-founding member of the Healthcare Anchor Network (HAN) in 2017. It signed HAN’s Place-based Investment Commitment in 2019, in which signatories pledge to allocate at least 1% or $50 million (whichever is less) of long-term reserves for impact investments that provide a modest financial return and high social impact in the low- and moderate-income communities they serve.
Trinity Health’s Community Investment Program
Trinity Health’s Community Investment Program is explored in a new case study. The case study covers the program’s history, design and implementation. The purpose of the program is to support projects, or loan pools, that will reduce social and economic disparities that cause unequal health outcomes for minority and low-income communities. These focus areas include but are not limited to: advancing access to higher education; fair and affordable housing; economic development and empowerment; and access to healthy, affordable food. In 2019, Trinity Health signed onto the Healthcare Anchor Network (HAN) Place-Based Investment Commitment in which Trinity Health committed $75…
Read or download Trinity Health’s Community Investment Program
Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Healthier Together Initiative
In 2019, HAN member Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) launched the Healthier Together Initiative, a $25 million, five year commitment to address the SDOH in the neighborhoods surrounding the hospital. Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) leverages their Healthier Together Initiative to increase procurement dollars with local, diverse vendors and support vendors in registering as MWBEs in Pennsylvania, while addressing the social determinants of health. The case study highlights CHOP’s strategy to help build capacity for local MWBEs through Healthier Together’s Community Asthma Prevention Program Plus (CAPP+), which works to eliminate sources of asthma triggers in homes with patients suffering from childhood…
Read or download Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Healthier Together Initiative
Kaiser Permanente Thriving Communities Fund
Kaiser Permanente’s Thriving Communities Fund is explored in a new case study. The case study covers the program’s inception and design, strategies employed, partnerships, key stakeholders involved. It also explores several of the program’s projects, including the Housing for Health Fund and the SDS Supportive Housing Fund.
Read or download Kaiser Permanente Thriving Communities Fund
CommonSpirit Health Community Investment Program
CommonSpirit Health’s Community Investment Program is explored in a new case study. The case study covers the program’s inception and design, strategies employed, and key stakeholders involved. It also discusses several of the program’s projects, including Stocktonians Taking Action to Neutralize Drugs (STAND), the Hill Country Community Clinic, and California FarmLink.
Read or download CommonSpirit Health Community Investment Program
Rush University System for Health Impact Investing Fund
Rush University System for Health’s (RUSH) Impact Investing Fund (“the Fund”) is explored in a new case study. The case study covers the Fund’s inception and design, strategies employed, and key stakeholders involved. In addition, it examines Rush’s partnerships with other local anchor institutions through West Side United (WSU) on place-based investing projects. Finally, it discusses several projects that the Fund has supported, including small businesses owned by people of color (like the Corner Store Deli and La Orquidea), and community development initiatives through Foundation for Homan Square (including Nichols Tower and Power House High School).
Anchor Mission Communications Toolkit
Hospitals and health systems and other anchor institutions from across the country are adopting an “anchor mission” to tackle the underlying economic and social determinants of community health outcomes and community well being. But how can both the what and the why of this new transformative approach be effectively communicated, inside and outside your institution?
Anchor Mission Communications Toolkit Resources
The Anchor Mission Communications Toolkit Resources is a list of resources and information referred to in the Anchor Mission Communications Toolkit, produced by the Healthcare Anchor Network (HAN) in collaboration with Rush University Medical Center (Rush) with links to directly access these resources.
Read or download Anchor Mission Communications Toolkit Resources
Anchor Mission Implementation Roadmap
This roadmap collects common milestones in the Anchor Mission implementation journey and shares examples of how health systems have educated staff on community needs and the Anchor Mission vision, created new staff positions to advance anchor strategies, developed dashboards to track progress, and more.
Community Benefit & Community Health Needs Assessment Checklist
Authored by CHAN Healthcare for the Healthcare Anchor Network, with input from the Healthcare Anchor Network’s Collaborating with Community Stakeholders initiative group, this document presents best practices for aligning Community Benefit and Community Health Needs Assessment processes.
Read or download Community Benefit & Community Health Needs Assessment Checklist
Healthy Communities Policy Framework
This document, created by the Aligning to Advance Policy Initiative Group of the Healthcare Anchor Network, outlines the foundational elements of a policy agenda to create equitable, engaged, connected and economically strong communities.
Hospitals Building Healthier Communities
This 2013 report from The Democracy Collaborative explores how health systems are addressing the upstream social and economic determinants of health.
Reimagining Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) Supply Chains
The Healthcare Anchor Network’s (HAN) white paper Reimagining Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) Supply Chains calls for national leadership and healthcare sector collaboration to create PPE production capacity for American sourced and manufactured supplies. The white paper was released at the HAN Anchoring Resilience: Aligning Supply Chains and Impact Purchasing for Community Health summit on November 18, 2020. The white paper details the current status of the supply chain of PPE, the market shifts caused by COVID-19, and the potential solutions to ensure capacity within US health systems for the future. It includes interviews with 17 HAN member senior supply…
Read or download Reimagining Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) Supply Chains