United Hospital Fund (UHF), the Altman Foundation, and The New York Community Trust (The Trust) united for the first time this year in a joint initiative, Partnerships for Early Childhood Development (PECD), to help health care providers recognize and address the social, environmental, and economic causes of poor health for very young children. A new article in the journal Health Affairs, Interest In Early Childhood Health Leads To Three Funders Working Together, describes the collaboration and the lessons it offers for other funders.
The article is co-authored by Suzanne Brundage, program director for UHF's Children's Health Initiative, Rachael Pine, senior program officer with Altman, and Irfan Hasan, director of The Trust's Healthy Lives grants program. It describes how their organizations are funding eleven New York City hospital-affiliated pediatric and family medicine practices, partnered with local community service organizations, to screen children ages 0-5 for such social determinants of health as food insecurity and lack of secure housing, and connect them with appropriate services.
The three authors explain why creative, flexible, and collaborative grant making can result in groundbreaking initiatives, with greater scale and scope than could be achieved individually. PECD also serves as an example of how grantmakers can model collaboration as they promote cross-sector partnerships among their grantees.
The full article can be found on the Health Affairs website here.