Safety-net Enhancement Initiative

This initiative is designed to reduce disparities and improve the health outcomes of low-income children and adults by enhancing collaboration among the agencies and institutions providing health and social supports in their communities. This is a four-year initiative consisting of two parts: (1) a program planning and design phase and (2) a demonstration phase.

A maximum of 15 grants will be awarded of up to $75,000 each for the first phase of the initiative, the nine-month program planning and design phase. Seven to 10 of the planning grant recipients will then be competitively selected to receive a second grant of up to $750,000 each for a three-year period. This will fund the demonstration of their proposed projects. At the conclusion of the three-year period, a comprehensive evaluation of the new models and approaches demonstrated by the projects will be conducted and the results will be made public. It is hoped that these new models will help to influence the future direction of health-care delivery in low-income and underserved areas.

Competitive applicants will propose projects that foster strategic partnerships between community-health centers and one or more anchor institutions, such as a public health system, public health department or school system – all in order to positively affect population health in their communities. We define community-health centers as organizations that provide primary-care services to low-income patients, including those designated federally qualified health centers, health center look-alikes, public health clinics, school-based health centers, nurse-managed clinics, and voluntary free clinics, among others.

Building more effective medical models – those that increase access and health-care delivery – while important, are no longer enough. We believe many community-health conditions are socially determined and must be addressed if we are to effectively construct a true and lasting health-care safety net. It is widely acknowledged, for example, that low-income children and adults experience a disproportionate incidence of preventable diseases. For this reason, competitive applicants will propose not only approaches that strengthen connections between existing providers but also forge new partnerships that will enable them to prevent disease by responding to the precipitating social determinants that affect the health status of vulnerable populations.

Unlike other Health Team grant opportunities, we are asking Safety-net Enhancement Initiative applicants to respond to our request for full proposals rather than submit a letter of inquiry, as is our standard practice.