September 2022 grant announcement: Foundation wraps 2022 grantmaking with $11.5 million to build health equity and end domestic violence
Blue Shield of California Foundation is announcing $11.5 million in grants to organizations that are helping to make California the healthiest state and end domestic violence. The Board of Trustees approved these investments at its Sept. 15, 2022 meeting, bringing the Foundation’s total grantmaking for 2022 to $29.5 million.
"Achieving health equity and ending domestic violence are bold goals that we believe our grantee partners are poised to reach. Through their work, we are pursuing the systems changes that will better serve California communities of color with low incomes that are most affected," said Debbie I. Chang, MPH, president and CEO of the Foundation.
Align systems with community priorities:
$4.25 million
One way to advance health equity and end domestic violence is to empower communities to drive the change they need. With grants to the Budget Power Project ($800,000 over two years) and California Economic Mobility Initiative ($400,000 over two years), we are equipping community-based organizations to engage in public budgeting processes and steer resources to Californians of color with low incomes.
Another way is to foster multisector collaboratives, in which sectors such as public health and housing come together with community organizations to solve problems. 2022 has been a notable year for the Foundation’s partners in this area.
In June, we celebrated a $15 million state funding allocation affirming the work of our longtime grantees at California Accountable Communities for Health Initiative (CACHI). These dollars will allow CACHI to spread and scale its collaborative model, tripling its number of sites in California.
This quarter, our $1 million, four-year renewal grant to BUILD Health Challenge will support the expansion of its community-based collaboratives.
"We have a unique opportunity with the launch of the fourth cohort of the BUILD Health Challenge to facilitate collaboration between communities, public health departments, hospitals, health plans, and others to create equitable change that lasts," said Executive Director Emily Yu. "We’re laser focused on working together as a network of over 70 communities, across all four BUILD cohorts, to change policies and practices that will advance better health for all."
Break the cycle of domestic violence: $2.6 million
In anticipation of the National Action Plan to End Gender-Based Violence, coming this year from the White House, the Foundation is partnering with the National Network to End Domestic Violence ($430,000 over two years) on implementation of the plan and some innovative policy frameworks.
As part of the strategy to prevent the transfer of domestic violence across generations, the Foundation is renewing its commitment to All In For Kids. The coalition of eight California organizations that aim to prevent childhood adversity and domestic violence is receiving a two-year grant of $600,000.
Another grantee partner making change at the community level is the Alliance for Boys and Men of Color. Its Healing Together campaign, Executive Director Eric Morrison-Smith explains, includes "nearly 100 organizations from the race and gender justice movements that have come together to change policies and narrative around intimate partner violence and shift the approach from one that’s punitive to one that’s more focused on accountability, healing, and actually supporting both those who have been harmed and those that caused harm." The Foundation is supporting this work with a two-year, $864,000 grant.
Strengthen economic security and mobility:
$2.2 million
The Foundation works to strengthen the economic security and mobility of Californians, including survivors of domestic violence. Grants of nearly $800,000 combined, to University of California, San Francisco for one year and to the California Partnership to End Domestic Violence for three years, will support research and solutions at the intersection of housing, homelessness, and domestic violence.
Because economic security and mobility are significant contributors to health and equity, the Foundation also funds organizations that help people access benefits such as paid leave.
One such organization is Small Business Majority, where Bianca Blomquist is the California policy director. "California’s paid family leave program is an important tool that helps small business owners provide quality jobs and compete for a talented workforce," she said. She explains that low-wage workers pay through taxes into California’s paid family leave program, but often don’t use it because it replaces just 70% of their earnings. A two-year, $450,000 grant from the Foundation "will help us continue advocating for fair and equitable paid family leave policy solutions, educating business owners, sharing our research, and elevating the small business voice," Blomquist said.
Other grants in support of our mission: $2.5 million
Other grants this quarter include $800,000 over three years for the Center on Gender Equity and Health at University of California, San Diego to research trends, experiences, and disparities in domestic violence; $476,000 to the Center for Health Journalism at the University of Southern California to facilitate in-depth reporting on health equity and domestic violence; and $200,000 toward the Hope and Heal Fund work at the intersection of gun violence and domestic violence.
"These 26 grants are, each in their own way, fueling the change we want to see in California," Chang said.
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For a complete list of current grants and more information on all of the Foundation’s grantmaking, please see our grants database. We also support grantees on social media (find us on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram), and feature their work in our newsletter, Intersections.
Blue Shield of California Foundation supports lasting and equitable solutions to make California the healthiest state and end domestic violence. When we work together to remove the barriers to health and well-being, especially for Californians most affected, we can create a more just and equitable future.
To build the capacity of domestic violence service organizations to advocate for, promote, and implement policies and programs at the intersection of domestic violence and housing.
To support the adaptation of guaranteed income pilots and microgrants to domestic violence survivors and indigenous communities in San Francisco, and to evaluate their health and economic security impacts in order to scale them statewide.
To support advocacy for, and outreach and implementation of paid family leave in California through research of small business owners, outreach and education to those businesses, and creating stories and messages that support paid leave policies.
To support the statewide scaling and evaluation of guaranteed income pilots, administered by the California Department of Social Services (CDSS), and evaluated by Urban Institute, through closing fund-matching disparity gaps in rural and indigenous communities across California.
To support the UCSF Benioff Housing and Homelessness Initiative to strengthen the voices of those with lived experience in homelessness and domestic violence research.
To develop and test the feasibility of culturally tailored, scalable interventions to improve take-up of the Federal and state Earned Income Tax Credits among participants in the Special Supplemental Food Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC).
To support eight Bay Area community and policy collaboratives to prevent childhood adversity and domestic violence by increasing peer learning capacity, changing narratives, and advocacy for systems change through parent organizing and multi-sector engagement.
To support a national network of state domestic violence coalitions in developing a prevention policy framework that promotes restorative and anticarceral approaches to the criminal legal response to domestic violence.
To support policy and systems change focused on addressing and preventing gender-based violence in California by generating new youth participatory action research and connecting California organizations supporting girls, femmes, and gender-expansive youth of color impacted by gender-based violence with national policy venues.
To support statewide policy change and community capacity-building across the Alliance for Boys and Men of Color network to prevent intimate partner violence and promote innovative community-based alternatives.
To evaluate the impacts of a tiered behavioral health crisis response system on intimate partner violence and on family safety.
To support a coalition of California community-based organizations partnering with local public health departments to strengthen data collection and reporting on Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander populations.
To design and conduct a study that compares the priorities of local policymakers in California and the communities they serve.
To support Bold Vision, a multiyear, multisector initiative to create a better, more equitable Los Angeles County for youth of color.
To strengthen the advocacy, organizing, leadership, and policy capacity of community-based organizations in the San Joaquin Valley to pursue systems changes that promote community health and racial equity for all.
To assist community-based organizations in building their capacity to participate in federally and state-funded economic development opportunities.
To build the capacity of community-based organizations that are led by and primarily serve communities of color in California to engage in public budgeting processes and drive public spending toward their needs.
To capture and share insights from the Catalyst and Amplify Healing Connections learning communities.
To support the fourth cohort of the BUILD Health Challenge, which will bring on two new sites in California, and provide capacity building support on equity and power sharing to all sites and applicants.
To build the capacity of ethnic media in California to report on health equity and domestic violence in the communities they and we serve, which can improve community health.
To train California journalists in health equity and domestic violence reporting that engages and empowers diverse communities and informs decisionmakers who can drive systems change.
To increase the number of the survey participants who are Black, Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander in the AmeriSpeak online survey panel for California.
To provide general operating support to Public Policy Institute of California, California’s leading research institute that uses data to encourage civil, productive dialogue that inspires sustainable policy solutions.
To augment and disseminate findings from the California Study on Violence EXperiences Across the Lifespan (CalVEX) study, allowing for comparisons of experiences with and root causes of intimate partner violence and domestic violence between and within underrepresented groups across the state of California.
To support the Hope and Heal Fund by promoting data, capacity building, and communications activities to prevent gun-related domestic violence, community violence, and suicides.
support the expansion of the Los Angeles County Center for Strategic Partnerships, a public-private pilot designed to promote collaboration within and among public and private stakeholders in Los Angeles county to fund, test, and spread family-focused strategies that prevent vulnerable children, youth, and families from entering county systems..
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