RWJF

We need your talent, passion, and perspective to enrich our work. RWJF is currently recruiting for an executive vice president. This role serves in a leadership position driving the Foundation’s broader transformation to deepen a focus on intersectional racial equity, purpose, and brand. You’ll work closely with other senior staff, trustees, and external partners and be involved in strategic planning, program development, and policy advocacy. Learn more about joining the team and apply today. https://rwjf.ws/aQm4si

We're seeking a senior manager in grants management. Apply today or tag a peer in the comments who may be interested. 👇🏼 #JobAlert #hiring #philanthropy #GrantsManagement

Zoila Jennings reminds us that understanding the human side of communities and what brings existing residents joy is part of how community development efforts can be truly effective.    That’s one reason our team at RWJF invests in community development financial institutions (CDFIs) that have the knowledge and relationships needed to ensure community voices, desires, and opinions are centered in development efforts that cultivate these feelings in the places we call home.    What makes you and your family joyful in your community? Drop your responses in the comments. ⬇️ 

Philanthropy has often perpetuated the very inequities it aims to solve. Confronting and redressing the harmful aspects of our legacies, while difficult and uncomfortable, will only make us more effective and trusted in communities at the heart of our mission.       This was the core of a wonderful discussion I recently had on reparative frameworks in philanthropy with Aria Florant. As a health philanthropy, RWJF’s work is centered on addressing health inequities. Embracing a reparative framework will mean more explicitly rebalancing our work toward efforts that target the historical root causes of health inequities, including those we have perpetuated.     This includes addressing the structural racism that undergirds the U.S. tax and caregiving systems in our efforts to support flourishing families and widen economic inclusion. It also includes expanding our nascent support for reparations to address the racial wealth gap, which has a clear, direct impact on health and wellbeing.      A reparative framework also means engaging in a truth and repair process to examine and rectify our own role in perpetuating health inequities:   ▪️ Our actions and inaction over time  ▪ Whose interests have driven decisions about our grantmaking and investments  ▪ Which institutions we have over- and under-resourced  ▪ The material outcomes of our work on communities most impacted by health inequities  ▪ The incomplete narratives that institutions tell to protect brands while leaving intact injustices faced by communities     Looking back and inward is necessary to understand unhelpful institutional cultures that persist, to adopt strategies that right past wrongs, and to sustain and accelerate the incremental shifts we already have been making.      This is why I especially appreciated hearing Aria share about Liberation Ventures’ work to build a culture of repair – which is more than one reparative action, but rather a culture and cycle of reckoning, acknowledgement, accountability, and redress to disrupt ongoing and future harm. Thank you Asset Funders Network for encouraging this dialogue.      I’d love to learn about how others are applying reparative frameworks in your philanthropic work. What challenges and successes have you encountered?  

As more communities turn to ballot measures to address critical issues that state legislatures have overlooked or deprioritized, they face pushback from lawmakers trying to complicate the process and maintain their power. At RWJF, we are committed to building a democracy that achieves health equity for everyone. One of the ways we're advancing this vision is by protecting the ballot measure process—an essential tool for a thriving democracy.   I recently had the privilege of speaking with our partner, Chris Melody Fields Figueredo, Executive Director of the BISC Foundation, where they are helping organizations and funders understand how ballot measures build power and strengthen civic engagement. Discover how we can work together to create equitable systems by safeguarding this vital democratic process.

To keep up momentum in the fight for health equity, we need to celebrate wins. That’s why I wrote about some good news in the health policy space for RWJF’s blog. I wanted to share recent efforts by RWJF to make healthcare more inclusive across the U.S. We submitted public comments on several federal rules to help make sure they were written in a way that best serves the public. The rules that were passed mean healthcare just got more accessible and better protected for everyone, but especially for: ✔️People eligible for Medicaid and CHIP ✔️Immigrants ✔️People with disabilities ✔️Those seeking reproductive healthcare, and ✔️LGBTQIA+ people Read more about these important changes: https://rwjf.ws/IvJzMr

A healthcare system that fosters a diverse workforce and breaks down the structural barriers to equitable care is key to ensuring health is not a privilege, but a right. RWJF is staying the course on our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion by increasing our investments toward a diverse healthcare workforce by 60 percent over the next three years.      Lauren Smith shares the Foundation’s new plans to support leaders and institutions that are confronting the structural barriers to diversity in the health professions. She also reflects on how her time at the Massachusetts Department of Health during the H1N1 pandemic taught her the power of fully committing to equity.     https://rwjf.ws/KucWsI     #HealthEquity #DiversityInHealthcare #StructuralRacism #LeadershipForBetterHealth 

Strategic, intentional, and consequential communications can be an accelerant for social change. Join the Collaborative on Media & Messaging for Health and Social Policy on October 1 from 1:00-2:00 p.m. ET to learn how your communications can shape opinions, attitudes, and behaviors in a complex, polarized, and changing information environment. Register for this free webinar on health equity communications. https://rwjf.ws/3ToAp5h

Join us on October 21 for a lively conversation between two leaders who are shaping the future of research. Listen in as they share bold ideas for how we can broaden research practices and beliefs to confront structural racism and advance health equity.    Get inspired as they get real about research and take on big questions like:   - What happens when researchers are guided by a community’s needs, instead of their own research agenda?   - What new insights and solutions can researchers unlock when they work side-by-side with young people, neighborhood residents, and others who bring first-hand knowledge and lived experience?

Join us on October 22 to hear from two trailblazing researchers dedicated to putting the public back in public health and ensuring the next generation of researchers reflect the communities they study.    Tune in as they talk to each other 1:1 about their groundbreaking work and how they put communities and health equity at the center. Hear about the solutions they see, and what it will take to make the future of research more equitable and inclusive.