Healthcare Anchor Network member Kaiser Permanente is supporting National Health Care for the Homeless Council as a community intermediary to fund at least four housing activist groups in California, Seattle and Portland, Oregon, areas hard hit by COVID-19, having nearly half of all coronavirus cases in the nation. Kaiser Permanente’s $1 million will help prevent and treat COVID-19 cases for homeless individuals. The health system wants to tap into and support the capacity of infrastructures that already exist, including those with national reach, in order to most effectively and efficiently meet community needs.
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Anchor procurement to build community wealth by supporting local, minority, women, and worker-owned businesses
Healthcare Anchor Network (HAN) members Advocate Health Care, AMITA Health, Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, and Rush University Medical Center, along with the City of Chicago, other anchor institutions and companies, are members of Chicago Anchors for a Strong Economy (CASE). CASE aims to generate inclusive economic growth through anchor procurement.
Continue ReadingNew worker-owned and health anchor-serving laundry facility breaks ground in Texas
The North Heights Linen Service is a 25,000-square-foot facility that will serve local and regional linen needs for hospitals, and will be a worker-owned cooperative business. The project funding is spearheaded by the Amarillo Area Foundation, as well as many local banks. The business is projecting to hire 40 nearby resident employees, eventually expanding to 100 employees.
Continue ReadingHAN members draw attention to the need for stable, affordable housing
On March 12, 2020, the Healthcare Anchor Network convened its members in Washington, D.C. for its second Housing for Health Policy Day, an event on Capitol Hill which saw Congressional staff, national healthcare associations, and housing advocacy groups attend a federal policy briefing about the impact of structural determinants of health and the universal need for stable, affordable, and healthy housing. 19 HAN member health systems participated in the event either in-person or virtually, and 22 health systems signed onto a Principles for Healthy and Affordable Housing document that was shared with Congressional members.
Continue ReadingAnchor institutions working with diverse entrepreneurs to build wealth, improve food access, and create jobs
HAN members Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Boston Children’s Hospital, along with other Boston anchor institutions, are procuring local and unique products from diverse, locally owned food start-up businesses. CommonWealth Kitchen, a nonprofit kitchen in Dorchester, MA, is incubating more than 50 small, mostly minority-owned, and community-based food start-up businesses. It adopted a strategy to help grow the start ups by connecting them to the product needs of Boston’s 20 hospitals and 31 universities, that comprise 18% of Boston’s employees.
Continue ReadingSentara Healthcare
Based in Norfolk, Virginia, Sentara serves patients with 12 acute care hospitals with more than 300 sites of care across Virginia and North Carolina. For more than 125 years, Sentara has been committed to helping people through every stage of life.
Continue ReadingHospital investments to create affordable housing
A new collaboration was announced between Healthcare Anchor Network member RWJBarnabas Health, Pennrose, LLC, the City of Newark, and the New Jersey Housing and Mortgage Finance Agency (NJHMFA) under the agency’s Hospital Partnership Subsidy Program. The program views housing as key to maintaining good health and looks to the role of hospitals as anchor institutions in the community to partner with. Under the program, NJHMFA will match funding contributions from RWJBarnabas Health to develop 65-70 affordable rental apartments in Newark’s South Ward for low- and moderate-income families and for special needs residents.
Continue ReadingOU Health
OU Health — along with its academic partner, the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center — serves residents of Oklahoma and the region with a comprehensive academic health system of hospitals, a children’s hospital, clinics and centers.
Continue ReadingAnchor 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?
Continue ReadingAnchor 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.
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