AGENDA AND NEXT STEPS: RESEARCH, PROGRAM, AND POLICY CHANGE Perspectives on Funding Community Pediatrics: A Panel Discussion of Private and Public Funders Community Access to Child Health and Medical Home National Conference Panel ABBREVIATIONS. MCH, Maternal and Child Health; RWJF, Rob- ert Wood Johnson Foundation. T his transcription was edited from a panel dis- cussion that took place on July 16, 2004, in Chicago, Illinois, at the American Academy of Pediatrics Community Access to Child Health and Medical Home National Conference. The panel con- sisted of local, national, private, and public funders and was moderated by Edward L. Schor, MD, Assis- tant Vice President of the Commonwealth Fund. The original title of the session at the meeting was “'Show Me the Money’ (Part 2): Private and Public Foundations.” INTRODUCTORY REMARKS BY THE CONVENER Jeff Kaczorowski, MD (Department of Pediatrics, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York) As impetus for the discussion, I’d like to tell you a brief story. A resident and I had just seen a 15-year- old boy who had been in a fight on the street and had had the corner of his mouth cut open with a knife. I said we could take care of this boy’s wound but that I was much more worried about what would happen to him on the streets again afterward. I told the resident something I had learned from Bob Hag- gerty, one of my mentors in Rochester, that in a city in the United States an adolescent male who comes to the hospital clinic or emergency department hav- ing been the victim of a violent assault has a shorter life expectancy than if he has just been diagnosed with AIDS. The resident told me: “It should be some- one’s job to do something about that.” I said: “It is. It’s our job.” He said: “No offense, but we’re already 7 patients behind, and who is ever going to allow us to do something like that?” INTRODUCTORY COMMENTS BY THE MODERATOR Edward L. Schor, MD Foundations, like government agencies, by and large operate to promote the common good. Foun- dations are established through provisions of the tax laws with the expectation that they will be account- able to the public. Local and regional funders, including state gov- ernments, are more likely to fund a service project, whereas national funders are more likely to be inter- ested in research and policy. You don’t go to the hardware store looking for groceries, and so you have to have a sense of what each of the funders’ agendas are. Presumably, the governmental funders are re- quired to keep their funding process transparent. Private foundations have more options in that re- gard. Some will keep their processes hidden; others are much more open about them. There is not an endless pool of money from which we’re drawing, nor do we sit at our desks and write checks. We spend much more of our time trying to get an understanding of the fields in which we’re operating, figuring out who’s doing good things and what the issues are. The panel members have been asked to respond to a series of 5 questions and then respond to the audi- ence’s questions. I’m going to have people introduce who they are in conjunction with the first question. QUESTION 1: What kind of funding organization do we come from, what kind of things do we typically fund, and how can someone find out about the mission? Jennifer M. Rosenkranz I’m Senior Program Officer with the Michael Reese Health Trust here in Chicago. I’m here representing conversion foundations. Conversion foundations re- sult from the sale of a nonprofit hospital, health system, or health plan when it converts from non- profit to for-profit. Grantmakers in Health has sur- veyed 165 of these conversion foundations around the country in 38 states with assets of $16.4 billion. So if you consider that foundations have to give away 5% of their assets per year, that’s approxi- mately $800 million in payout each year. Most of them do fund in a limited geographic area. Clarita Santos, MPH I’m with the United Way Metropolitan Chicago. Our focus area is mainly Chicago and its suburbs in Illinois. Some of the programs that we fund are health and human service–focused with an emphasis Accepted for publication Dec 22, 2004. doi:10.1542/peds.2004-2825R No conflict of interest declared. Address correspondence to Edward Schor, MD, FAAP, Commonwealth Fund, One E 75th St, New York, NY 10021-2692. E-mail: els@cmwf.org PEDIATRICS (ISSN 0031 4005). Copyright © 2005 by the American Acad- emy of Pediatrics. 1188 PEDIATRICS Vol. 115 No. 4 April 2005 by guest on June 1, 2020 www.aappublications.org/news Downloaded from