Avera Health is a faith-based health ministry comprised of 315 locations in 100 communities in five states across the Upper Midwest. Avera’s 22,100 physicians and employees serve a population of 1 million people.
Continue Readingtest
Putting anchor assets to work for local businesses
“We are able to take care of business like we’re supposed to. We’re able to see our goals being fulfilled with this building. We’re able to breathe a little easier and not have those high-interest loans hanging over our heads. We were able to believe in the banking system again,” said Deborah James of Freddie […]
Continue ReadingTangible actions to drive health & wellbeing
HAN’s president and founder, David Zuckerman, shared his perspective on how health systems can be part of the long-term solution to community disinvestment and economic insecurity through leveraging their place-based economic power. From The Health System CXO podcast: One of the things that we’ve talked about a lot on this podcast is really putting concepts focused on […]
Continue ReadingJoin us for HAN’s annual Policy Day!
HAN’s Policy Day 2025 will be held on May 7, 2025 from 9:00 am to 11:30 am in person at the Rayburn House Office Building, Foyer in Washington, D.C. and online. Please save the date! A registration email with the event agenda and speaker lineup will be sent out in later this month. This is a year of uncertainties at the federal […]
Continue ReadingFunding our neighborhoods for community health
HAN member Stanford Health Care hosted a Health Equity Symposium that highlighted the importance of partnerships in addressing disparities. When Martin Luther King Jr. alluded to disparities in income, housing and education during a speech at Stanford University in 1967, he was referring to what physicians today would recognize as social determinants of health, said Joyce Sackey, MD, chief equity, […]
Continue ReadingPlace-Based Investments in Action: How Healthcare Anchor Network Members are Helping Build Healthier Communities
The Healthcare Anchor Network defines place-based investing (PBI) as an impact investing approach that generates positive social and economic impacts in historically disinvested communities and geographies, while achieving a modest financial return, or at least preserving the principal of the investment. Place-based investments address financing gaps in the marketplace by providing affordable and flexible capital […]
Continue ReadingThe anchor mission ethos
A new Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health case study, Navigating Change: Sustaining the Anchor Mission Amidst Leadership Transition at UMass Memorial Health, details HAN member UMass Memorial Health’s accomplishments over the first five years of anchor mission implementation. The groundbreaking initiative focused on leveraging UMMH’s economic power to improve community health and well-being through local sourcing, local hiring, and investing in […]
Continue ReadingInvesting to preserve affordable housing
Thanks in part to three HAN members, Boston Children’s Hospital, Boston Medical Center, and Mass General Brigham, along with the Boston Foundation and other institutions, the Boston Acquisition Fund (BAF) was launched to provide $25 million for a revolving loan fund. The fund will provide low-interest loans to mission-driven developers to purchase occupied multi-family housing in the city of Boston to protect […]
Continue ReadingReimagining the future with the community
HAN member Advocate Health organized 20 listening sessions to develop a bold new vision to provide $1 billion to reimagine a healthier future for the South Side of Chicago. The health system will allocate $25 million for workforce development and hiring more than 1,000 new teammates within the next three years. There will also be additional training […]
Continue ReadingThe Anchor Mission Framework and the Evolving Political Landscape
The anchor mission is a place-based ethos and intentional values-driven approach to leveraging the assets of health systems and other mission-driven, large employers, to strengthen their local economies and improve economic mobility for low-income individuals and families. This collaborative common-sense strategy, which could include multiple anchors working together to scale impact, fosters resilience and delivers […]
Continue Reading