News and updates

Kaiser Permanente, a member of the Healthcare Anchor Network, is further responding to the California affordable housing crises by committing an additional $25 million to California Governor Gavin Newsom’s Access to Housing and Services Fund. The health system has already pledged $200 million in impact investments to support community health, particularly on affordable housing.

Modern Healthcare ran a series highlighting how Healthcare Anchor Network (HAN) members have been stepping up efforts to reduce socio-economic, racial, and ethnic disparities in their communities and to build community wealth. The HAN members covered in the series include AMITA Health, Cleveland Clinic, Kaiser Permanente, Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, Rush University Medical Center, The MetroHealth System, and University Hospitals.

These maps were created to show the central role of hospitals and health systems as significant employers in their local economies. The maps show that Healthcare Anchor Network (HAN) members as well as other hospitals and health systems are some of the largest employers in their states and regions. HAN members alone, with 45 health systems represented in the Network, employ more than 1.5 million people. They also purchase over $50 billion annually and have over $100 billion in investment assets. Overall, the healthcare sector has enormous economic power and is responsible for producing 18% of GDP.​

HAN member MetroHealth created the country’s first high school in a hospital, Lincoln-West School of Science and Health, three years ago in Cleveland. In addition to offering regular high school courses, students learn about the health care sector and how to become nurses and doctors. The students come from low income families, and one third of them speak English as a second language.

Bon Secours Mercy Health was one of 14 Healthcare Anchor Network (HAN) members that announced commitments of over $700 million in impact investing in November 2019. This Reuters article covers the health system’s investment partnership with Maggie Walker Community Land Trust to build permanently affordable homes in Richmond, Virginia—and the lives this investment has impacted.

The staff at The Democracy Collaborative (TDC) and the Healthcare Anchor Network (HAN) are deeply shocked and saddened by the sudden passing of Bernard J. Tyson, Chairman and CEO of Kaiser Permanente. Words can’t express how much Bernard’s passing impacts all who were fortunate to have met and shared time with him. We would like to express our heartfelt sympathies to his family and his Kaiser Permanente family.

Washington, D.C., November 5, 2019 – Fourteen hospitals and health systems, including national health systems and regional systems, that are the largest private sector employers in California, Utah, and Wisconsin, along with others that are also among the top 20 largest employers in their states, announced a commitment of over $700 million for place-based investing to create strong and healthy communities.

A major feature online this week and in print this past Sunday in the New York Times highlights the work of the Democracy Collaborative to enlist healthcare anchor institutions—and their considerable institutional resources—as key drivers of community wealth building.

In an opinion piece in the Grantmakers In Health “News from the Field” newsletter, David Zuckerman and Bich Ha Pham make the case for funders to support expansion of anchor mission work as a strategic priority.