The Health Fund is pleased to share that we’ve awarded $3 million to 37 organizations across the state through our responsive grant program. These grants will support projects across all eight of our focus areas, and span every region of the state.
Though we recently announced our first proactive initiative awards, responsive giving is still a critical part of our strategy. This broader program allows us to invest in pilot projects and respond to emerging or time-sensitive needs in Michigan communities. In this round we prioritized infant mortality and health services for foster and adopted children, so you’ll see a heavier balance of those programs in these awards.
You can follow along with us on Facebook and Twitter as we try to keep up the the inspiring work of all our grantees. For now, here’s the full list of awards from this responsive round:
Leveraging Technology to Improve Outcomes for Michigan’s Children in Foster Care, Altarum Institute | $99,865
Altarum will design a solution to facilitate the timely exchange of oral health information between the healthcare providers and social service teams serving Michigan’s 14,000 children in foster care. The project will also advance care planning and coordination of oral health services by educating and training 40 caseworkers in southeast Michigan to use a first-of-its-kind statewide oral health monitoring system, Michigan’s Dental Registry.
dCare – Improving the Health of Care Managers, Area Agency on Aging 1-B | $78,875
SameAddress, a program of the Area Agency on Aging 1-B, will enhance their dCare platform, an online tool that simplifies care management for seniors and people with disabilities.
Innovative Frameworks, The Baldwin Center, Inc. | $87,702
The Baldwin Center will work with human service agencies in Oakland County to implement the Transition to Success model in Pontiac, improving health outcomes and economic status of residents served.
BE Nutritious Banks and Pantries, Barry-Eaton District Health Department | $25,048
This project will increase access to nutritious foods at food pantries, helping reduce nutrition-related diseases among low-income people.
Community-Based Doula Accreditation Program, Black Mothers’ Breastfeeding Association | $38,600
BMBFA will expand their doula program, improving the quality of service and outcomes for Detroit mothers and babies.
Growing Urban Farms in Detroit, Central Detroit Christian Community Development Corporation | $50,000
This program will educate and empower residents to cultivate and harvest home-grown products that can be used to improve their own nutrition or to create a revenue stream through sales to local food enterprises.
Safe Baby Academy – Protecting Your Sleeping Baby, Children’s Hospital of Michigan Foundation | $80,328
Providing infant safety and safe sleep education, along with the necessary resources to ensure a safe sleeping environment, will help reduce infant mortality in Detroit and Pontiac.
Flint Water Crisis Recovery Effort, Community Foundation of Greater Flint | $250,000
This grant continues to support the work of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University researcher Marc Edwards and staff to assist with the recovery from the Flint water crisis. In partnership with the Charles Steward Mott Foundation, this funding has reimbursed Edwards and his employer for part of his time, without creating a financial conflict or interest.
Healthy Mothers on the Move/Madres Saludables en Movimiento, Community Health and Social Services Center, Inc. | $99.924
CHASS will implement a healthy lifestyle intervention offering home visits, group classes, physical activity, and social support from trained community health workers and peers to pregnant women and women with children up to age 2. Supporting children in their first 1000 days will lay the foundation for optimal development and help them thrive.
Reducing Rapid Repeat Pregnancies, Corner Health Center | $25,980
Corner Health will provide a group mentoring program for postpartum adolescents with the goal of delaying subsequent pregnancies.
Detroit Food Academy School-Based Program, Detroit Food & Entrepreneurship Academy | $50,000
This program will engage an additional 50 students and 3 high school partners in a yearlong, food-rooted after-school program. The goal is to help Detroit youth grow as healthy, connected, powerful young leaders prepared for a life of wellness.
Double Up Food Bucks – Flint Expansion, Fair Food Network | $100,000
Fair Food Network will expand the highly successful Double Up Food Bucks healthy food incentives project in Flint, helping increase produce consumption for low-income families.
Grandparent-Raised Support Services, Genesee Health Plan | $46,950
This project will provide integrated behavioral and physical health management services to Genesee County seniors and the grandchildren they are raising.
Northern Michigan PACE -Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly, Grand Traverse Pavilions Foundation | $75,000
The goal of this grant is to assist the Grand Traverse Pavilions as the lead organization to bring the proven model of PACE to a seven-county region of northern Michigan.
Improving Access to Healthy, Fresh Food for Kids in Northwest Michigan, Groundwork Center for Resilient Communities | $100,000
The Groundwork Center will make healthy, fresh, seasonal food more accessible to young children in northwest lower Michigan, especially at their schools, where many kids get their most reliable meal of the day. They will also work with food pantries, food services directors, and administrators to identify and overcome barriers to fresh food access.
Growing Healthy Seniors, Growing Hope | $38,018
This project will address chronic diet-related health disparities faced by low-income people, particularly seniors, in Ypsilanti. Growing Hope will help seniors increase their consumption of produce from their gardens, find a sense of community, and access resources they can use to improve their diets and physical health.
Trauma-Informed Supervised Visitation, Growth Works | $98,170
Growth Works currently provides a setting for non-custodial parents to meet and interact with their children in a safe, supervised setting. This grant will add a therapeutic component to the program, helping families address underlying trauma and strengthening the parent-child relationship.
Strong Beginnings Intervention, The Guidance Center | $100,000
This pilot project will provide multifamily parenting support and mental health intervention for foster parents and biological parents with infants and young children in the child welfare system.
Women-Inspired Neighborhood Network: Detroit’s enhanced Group Prenatal Care Model, Henry Ford Health System | $100,000
This program addresses social determinants of health and is tailored to vulnerable African American women by working with community health workers to connect participants to medical, social, and economic resources that support equity in birth outcomes and foster maternal self-sufficiency. This grant will support the incorporation of game-changing evaluation and technology to prepare this program for replication and scale both nationally and locally.
JED Campus Program for Michigan Colleges and Universities, The Jed Foundation | $50,000
The goal of this project to enable colleges and universities in Michigan to strengthen their work protecting the mental well-being of and preventing suicide among their students.
Tele-Psych Implementation Technology Enhancement to Increase Access of Care to Foster and Adopted Children in Macomb County, Judson Center | $100,000
Judson Center will provide psychiatric services by utilizing telecommunications, increasing access to care for underserved children including those in foster care.
Foster CARE (Coordinating Access to Resources and Education), Macomb Children’s Healthcare Access Program | $100,000
MCHAP will provide high quality care, including health promotion, acute care, and chronic condition management, in a planned, coordinated and family-centered manner for 100 foster youth annually in Macomb County.
Desde el primer momento, MHP Salud | $94,217
Desde el primer momento (“From the First Moment”) will reduce infant mortality among hispanic families in Lenawee County by implementing a prenatal education and home visiting program led by community health workers. A trained, bilingual promotor(a) de salud will provide outreach, education, and home visits to the target community and will improve participants’ knowledge about healthy pregnancy and birth, and how to care for a newborn.
Project Re:form, Michigan Department of Health and Human Services | $99,000
Project Re:form will create and test a faster, simpler, and more customer-centered application for Michigan’s largest assistance programs.
Piloting CSA Shares as a Tool to Fight Childhood Obesity and Hunger, Michigan Environmental Council | $100,000
This pilot project will provide 120 families served by food assistance programs in Detroit, Lansing, and Ann Arbor with free community supported agriculture (CSA) shares from June through October of 2017. Careful program design and assessment will help MEC determine if and how giving low-income families no-cost weekly access to fresh produce is an effective tool for addressing hunger and childhood obesity.
Centering Pregnancy, Michigan Health Improvement Alliance | $67,236
MiHIA will work with Central Michigan University Medical Education Partners to implement and expand CenteringPregnancy, a proven group-based model of providing prenatal care to patients. The goal is to improve perinatal outcomes by reducing the rate of spontaneous pre-term birth and low birth weigh infants, leading contributing factors to perinatal mortality.
Developing Accessible Health-Related Training for Kinship Caregivers Serving Foster Children, Michigan State University | $75,661
The MSU School of Social Work will develop free health-related online training and resources for kinship caregivers serving foster children.
Addressing Infant Mortality Disparities by In-Depth Pregnancy Assessment, Michigan State University | $100,000
By better understand pregnancy, this project will help reduce infant and maternal mortality in Michigan.
Pediatric Fruit and Vegetable Prescription for Healthy Eating Model, Munson Healthcare Foundation | $67,147
Through their Shape Up North program, Munson Medical Center will build a model for rural northern Michigan that will improve the affordability and consumption of healthy food by underserved children.
MORE (MAGIC, Ozone, REACH, Education) Support Project, Ozone House Youth & Family Services | $100,000
This program will address the social determinants of health by providing comprehensive trauma-informed behavioral health services to college-bound and college students who have aged out of foster care in Washtenaw County.
Improving Health Outcomes for Foster Children and Youth, Pediatric Foundation of Michigan | $20,000
This grant will help develop a toolkit for communities across Michigan that will help them conduct successful learning collaborative events around strengths, barriers, and gaps in comprehensive health care for children in foster care.
Enhancing Perinatal Father Engagement in Health Care Settings, The Regents of the University of Michigan | $92,390
The Health Start Engaged Father program will reduce infant mortality by providing men with knowledge and resources to support the health and well-being of their partners during and after pregnancy.
A Healthy Start at Life, St. Joseph Mercy Health System | $75,000
The only birthing hospital in Pontiac will address Michigan’s high infant mortality rate by modeling Safe Sleep behaviors, opening a breastfeeding clinic, and enhancing care for infant born with Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome.
Refugee Health Access, St. Vincent Catholic Charities | $70,000
This program will provide interpretation, transportation, education, and cultural supports to new refugee arrivals, helping them access local health services.
Enhancing Awareness of and Services to Treat Pre-Diabetes Across the Upper Peninsula, UPCAP Services, Inc. | $48,160
UPCAP will increase awareness of and testing for pre-diabetes, as well as referrals and participation in lifestyle programs to treat pre-diabetes. By helping to prevent or delay diabetes in at-risk people, the project will ultimately save healthcare dollars.
Make Your Date: Detroit’s Plan to Reduce Preterm Birth, $100,000 | Wayne State University
Wayne State’s Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology applies a single citywide strategy incorporating a combination of evidence-based innovations aimed at reducing preterm birth. This grant will support expansion of the program throughout Detroit, the the ultimate goal of reaching all pregnant women in the city.
Kalamazoo Infant Mortality Community Action Initiative, YWCA Kalamazoo | $100,000
This collaborative effort includes local agencies, stakeholders, and community residents and aims to reduce the infant mortality rate in racial/ethnic minority populations in Kalamazoo to 6.0 per 1,000 births by 2020. This grant will help create a data-driven, evidence-based coordinated system of care that places resources in the hands of those most in need and reduces racial disparities in infant mortality.
