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During the past year, The California Endowment has been engaged in a rigorous and exhilarating strategic planning process that will define our focus for 2010-2020, and so it is fitting that this annual report focuses on transformation—both large and small—within organizations, within communities and within health systems.
We began this period with a thoughtful appraisal of our decade-long legacy as a grant-making organization. We reviewed the lessons of approximately 9,200 grants totaling $1.7 billion to nonprofit organizations throughout the state since our inception. We spent hundreds of hours interviewing grantees, community stakeholders and health experts about the foundation’s past work and gathering data related to health needs and trends in California that will inform its future work.
The California Endowment awarded more than $120 million in grants in the 2006-07 fiscal year, and we believe the efforts highlighted in this report collectively set a clear vision of how we can together fundamentally transform California’s communities moving forward.
The California Endowment’s successful partnerships with organizations tackling children’s health issues – childhood obesity, juvenile justice, asthma, health insurance – have revealed to us the importance of prevention in building healthy communities and improving the well-being of our most vulnerable populations. We are proud of a project we funded that led to a group of children persuading a local retailer to offer healthier snacks at its checkout stands.
This report also highlights the Healthy Returns Initiative, a four-year project of The California Endowment and five California county probation departments that is fundamentally transforming the way juvenile detention centers approach the health needs of youth. By integrating community intervention services and focusing on physical and mental health needs, Healthy Returns is improving access to health services for adolescents in detention facilities and providing for a healthy re-entry into their communities.
We have also seen how community-level leadership and innovation can transform policies and systems to create healthier communities. With the support of The California Endowment, the city of Richmond became the first California community to make the factors that impact public health a cornerstone of the city’s planning efforts. Underscoring the link between physical space and public health, Richmond is including specific community health considerations in its new General Plan, the city’s blueprint for the next 10 to 20 years.
The California Endowment’s Center for Healthy Communities, which helps expand the organization’s evolving role not just as a grant maker, but as a strong advocate for transforming the way the state approaches health, produced its inaugural public events series in January. The first was a panel of the leading experts on health policy and politics discussing Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s reform proposal. That same month, the Center also hosted the inaugural California Health Strategy Summit, which brought together leaders from throughout the state to address the challenges posed by communicable disease and chronic illness and to develop new approaches to improve the public's health. The Center continues to engage Endowment grantees by offering its Health ExChange Academy, a series of in-depth trainings in the areas of advocacy, evaluation and communications.
We know that to achieve our vision of transforming California’s communities and improving the health status of all Californians, we must continue to forge strong partnerships and build a statewide movement for change.
We are looking forward to working with you on this effort.
Sincerely,
Arthur Chen, M.D.
Chair, Board of Directors
Robert K. Ross, M.D.
President and CEO
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