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When Kansans speak, the Health Foundation listens.
We teamed up with the Center for Effective Philanthropy for a 2008 survey to ask people across the state for feedback about the Kansas Health Foundation. Almost 150 people shared with us the major health issues they see in the state, and they asked for more information about our Foundation’s goals and areas of focus.
The Foundation has taken those ideas and opinions to heart. In response to this survey as well as speaking with hundreds of other Kansans during listening tours and meetings, we recently decided to refine our areas of focus and offer more details about the goals we have set in our determination to improve the health of all Kansans.
Here are the areas where the Kansas Health Foundation will be focusing many of our resources for the foreseeable future:
- Promoting the healthy behaviors of Kansas children. To encourage positive habits that last a lifetime, we will concentrate on ensuring proper nutrition, increasing physical activity and decreasing tobacco use. “Focusing on these areas will improve the lives of children and lead Kansas to a healthier future because we know these habits will reduce the three main causes of death and disability in Kansas,” says Mary K. Campuzano, vice president of programs at the Foundation. “If we can improve these behaviors in children as they’re growing up, we know they’re less likely to run into problems like obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer later in life. Preventing those problems now is much better than treating them later.”
- Strengthening the public health system. We will expand our partnerships with state and local health departments because we believe that all residents of Kansas deserve equal levels of public health protection and access to services regardless of where they live in the state. The Foundation will also broaden our efforts to explore how regional collaboration might strengthen local health departments and support their efforts to become accredited. For the public, accreditation promotes the health, safety and welfare of society by assuring competent public health professionals. Accreditation benefits public health workers as well because it ensures that educational requirements reflect the current training needs of the profession. In 2011, public health departments can begin becoming accredited. Foundation Program Officer Carolyn Williams says it is speculated that at some point in the future, funding to local and state health departments will be based on whether they are accredited. “What we really want to see is that public health departments are positioned to be accredited to take advantage of the federal guidelines that are coming down,” says Steve Coen, president and CEO of the Foundation.
- Improving access to health care for Kansas children. This is the Foundation’s newest focus area, and we’re still in the process of setting all of our goals here, but one new priority is rock solid. “We want to do everything we can to increase the enrollment and retention for children in HealthWave,” Coen says. State health officials believe that about 53,000 Kansas children are uninsured. About two-thirds of these children, officials say, are eligible for – but are not enrolled in – HealthWave, the state’s health insurance program for children in low- and modest-income families.
- Growing community philanthropy. We are committed to building a network of local community foundations dedicated to improving the health of their communities. Our efforts in this area will revolve around the second phase of our GROW (Giving Resources to Our World) Healthy Kansas Initiative. By investing $30 million in GROW II, the Foundation will assist many more community foundations across the state in building endowments, learning new financial management strategies and exploring ways that foundations can work together to reduce expenses and raise the quality of their services. One of the Kansas Health Foundation’s priorities for this new phase of GROW is to help foundations build endowments that are focused on public health improvements.
- Providing health data and information to policymakers. The Foundation works to ensure that accurate, adequate and accessible information is available to public, local and state leaders and policymakers so they can make informed decisions. To further this effort, we founded and will continue to fund the Kansas Health Institute. As an independent, nonprofit health policy and research organization based in Topeka, KHI leads our effort of providing health data to policymakers.
- Building civic leadership. We believe that you can improve communities by creating leaders who have the skills and confidence to help rally others around positive changes. Leaders trained through Kansas Health Foundation programs are responsible for hundreds of success stories in towns across the state. In 2007, we founded the Kansas Leadership Center with the intention of nurturing and building more leaders throughout the state. In the years to come, the Kansas Leadership Center will work closely with Kansas communities to help them address their challenges and take them to the next level of leadership.
One driving force behind all of the Foundation’s work is a commitment to build more partnerships with Kansas communities and organizations. These six new focus areas give the Kansas Health Foundation a strong framework to accomplish our overarching goal of improving the health of all Kansans, but they are not set in stone if the needs of Kansas change. “We’re continuing to refine these focus areas, and we’ll keep our finger on the pulse of the needs of Kansans,” Coen says. “We know that we can never accomplish any of these things without partnering with organizations across the state. Working together, we can make Kansas a healthier place to live.”
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