Mid-Iowa Health Foundation wraps up five-year grants campaign
JOE GARDYASZ Nov 10, 2016 | 4:51 pm
1 min read time
340 wordsAll Latest News, Arts and Culture, Health and WellnessMid-Iowa Health Foundation this morning presented $10,000 Capstone Prizes to two organizations nominated by their peers as best fulfilling the foundation’s two primary goals over the past five years, and announced the launch of a new initiative for funding projects over the next five years.
Prevent Child Abuse Iowa received the Children’s Healthy Development Capstone Prize of $10,000 for its collaborative project, Building Systems and Communities Responsive to Childhood Trauma.
EMBARC (Ethnic Minorities of Burma Advocacy and Resource Center) was awarded the Safety Net Capstone Prize of $10,000 for its Refugee Health Navigator Project.
The awards were announced during a celebration event this morning at the Greater Des Moines Botanical Garden, with representatives of health and social services organizations from throughout the metro area in attendance.
Over the past five years, Mid-Iowa Health Foundation has awarded more than $3 million in grants to organizations to improve the health of vulnerable people, focusing on the priorities of children’s healthy development and health care safety net projects.
Mid-Iowa Health officials today announced a new funding initiative, Health Connect, with a goal to “create opportunities and reduce social barriers to ensure healthy development for our community’s most vulnerable children and youth.”
“In our strategic planning process, we began to hear a theme,” foundation board member Libby Jacobs said. ” ‘Where we live, work and play has a great influence on our health.’ It became readily apparent that the No. 1 priority is to create opportunities and to ensure healthy development for our most vulnerable population.”
A key aspect of the new initiative will be to address the social determinants of health affecting children in Greater Des Moines. Among those factors, as attendees saw in a brief video, are that 20 percent of children in the region lack adequate food, 13.2 percent are exposed to drug abuse, and 12,000 are victims of abuse and neglect.
“We believe our ability to be a healthy community lies largely in addressing these upstream (health) factors,” Jacobs said.
To read a Business Record article about Mid-Iowa Health Foundation, click here.
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