Equitable HEALTH Systems
Decreasing Health Disparities to Improve Health Systems
We’re supporting systems-based solutions and empowering communities in North Carolina to eliminate health disparities.
Why equitable health systems?
Inequities in health systems—by race, class and geography—must be eliminated.
Providing access to medical care by itself will not change historic health inequities. That’s why we support meaningful progress to change the systems that impact social determinants of health—the conditions outside the medical office, such as housing, transportation, and the built environment that impact health outcomes.
Our Goals
Leverage reforms in the value-based care implementation process to narrow systemic racial and ethnic inequities in health outcomes.
What we know: Value-based care is meant to encourage population health improvement and keep people out of the hospital. Because the health care system is undergoing a sweeping shift driven by rising costs, poor outcomes, and federal reform–it is moving away from traditional reimbursement methods built on individual payments for each medical service to a concept called value-based care.
What we do: We work to ensure that this change narrows racial disparities in health outcomes and improves the health of people whom the system has too often overlooked. We know the power is in community. That’s why we work to build community networks, organizational, and individual capacity so that historically-marginalized populations—particularly Black, Immigrant, Indigenous, and other leaders of color—can drive health improvement efforts. We support efforts that conduct evaluation and community-led research, implement evidence-informed, evidence-based and innovative approaches, and improve the payment process.
Work with health systems to improve health outcomes for Medicaid and uninsured populations by addressing social drivers of health and well-being.
What we know: Research increasingly shows us that social, economic and environmental factors are much greater drivers of health than what happens in the clinic and hospital. The health care system is undergoing a sweeping shift driven by rising costs, poor outcomes, and federal reform, and is moving away from traditional reimbursement methods built on individual payments for each medical service to a concept called value-based care. Value-based care is meant to encourage population health improvement and keep people out of the hospital.
What we do: We support efforts to better understand the social determinants of health, as well as innovative approaches, such as value-based care, to helping health systems address these underlying drivers. We also support community-based efforts to collaborate between clinical providers and organizations that address social drivers of health and well-being. We also build the capacity of community-based organizations that help financially disadvantaged residents to understand and engage with the health care delivery system.
Our Grantmaking Strategies
We leverage a variety of strategies to advance our goals, across all programs, initiatives, and bodies of work.
Activating Change With Our Values
We start by listening. Believe in communities. Engage unlikely partners. Employ a place-based approach. Believe equity is essential to everything we do. Focus on outcomes. Support scale and sustainability.
Funding Opportunities
Find out what we’re funding now.