Community Health The Focus of New Medline Grant Program

Community health centers (CHC) across the country face a mounting set of challenges. The primary challenge is to provide care to some of the most underserved and underinsured patients. Their daunting other challenge comes in the form of insecure funding. To help these organizations and the millions of patients they serve, Medline has announced a new Community Impact Grant for Community Health Centers.

The grants, totaling $100,000 in 2019, recognize the work CHCs do in serving some 28 million patients including:

• 13 million people in poverty
• 8.4 million children
• 1.4 million homeless patients
• 1 million agricultural workers
• Over 350,000 veterans

These patients rely on CHCs for access to high quality, affordable and comprehensive primary and preventative medical, dental and mental health care. Funding cuts and delays have already forced some health centers to make drastic cuts to their services and limit the care they can provide to underserved communities. In fact, the Kaiser Family Foundation found that government funding delays had caused 20% of health centers to institute a hiring freeze and 4% have laid off staff, while 3% of responding health centers had taken steps to close one or more sites and an additional 36% indicated they are considering doing so. The new grant program seeks to ensure patients and communities retain access to vital healthcare services.

“Medline recognizes the impact community health centers have in their communities,” says Karen Frey, senior philanthropy manager at Medline. “Their work addresses social determinants of health and dramatically improves the health in their community. The grant program will bolster these existing efforts to promote health and health equity for patients and communities they live in.”

Applications for grants opened in March and will remain open through November.

Learn more about how Medline is shaping healthcare to align action with values.