Nearly $2 Million in Grants from the Kaiser Permanente Community Fund are Announced by the...

PORTLAND, Ore. -- The Northwest Health Foundation announced today that it has awarded $1,981,994 in the first round of grants of the Kaiser Permanente Community Fund (KPCF). Grants were awarded to 11 organizations working to improve the health of the communities served by Kaiser Permanente Northwest

"Vulnerable people in our community must overcome incredible barriers to keep themselves and their families healthy," said Nancy Stevens, Director of Community Benefit at Kaiser Permanente Northwest and an advisor to the KPCF. "We know that poverty and racism are partly responsible for inequalities in health status and health care. The Kaiser Permanente Community Fund was created to address these complex issues of race, gender, and class that can seem so overwhelming."

The KPCF was established in 2004 at Northwest Health Foundation to improve access to health care for the vulnerable and uninsured, reduce health disparities, and promote intercultural health. The KPCF is the Foundation's largest donor-advised fund.

Among the organizations receiving grants is the Cornelius, Ore.-based Virginia Garcia Memorial Health Center, a clinic that for 25 years has provided culturally competent health services to a predominantly Latino population in Washington County. The clinic received funding from the KPCF to establish a new, permanent dental facility in Yamhill County, where there is a severe lack of dentists to serve the area's low-income families. All dental providers at the new facility will speak Spanish.

The Oregon Law Center received a grant to help prevent workplace sexual assault of migrant farm worker women in northwest Oregon. Funds will support the center's community health workers to build social networks and leadership among indigenous farm worker women from regions such as southern Mexico and Guatemala. Many of these women speak only indigenous languages such as Mixteco or Zapotec, and experience pervasive discrimination and disadvantages within the migrant farm worker community.

The Southwest Washington Tribal Health Alliance received funding to open a new nursing center serving American Indian and low-income people in Clark County and Skamania County, Washington. In Skamania County, 40 percent of residents lack health insurance, physicians are scarce, and rates of injury, death, and diseases like cancer and diabetes are much higher than in other parts of the state. The nursing center will increase access to health care for thousands of patients each year, and also serve as a clinical training site for nursing students from OHSU and Washington State University's Vancouver campus.

HOST Development, Inc. received a grant to help working poor, primarily African American families in north Portland buy their first home. A lack of adequate, affordable housing can exacerbate other problems associated with poverty such as stress, social exclusion, illness, and disease. Creating economic opportunity through home ownership, family by family, is seen by the KPCF advisors as a potentially potent strategy to improve health status at the community level.

"The Kaiser Permanente Community Fund advisors set out to identify bold and creative solutions," Stevens said. "These organizations are working every day to achieve health equity through principles of social justice. We are delighted that the KPCF is supporting all of these important projects."

A complete list of grantees, project descriptions and award amounts is available on the Foundation's website, www.nwhf.org.

NWHF was founded in 1997 from the net proceeds of the sale of PACC Health Plans and PACC HMO and has awarded more than $25 million to organizations serving the health needs of the region. It is an independent, charitable foundation committed to advancing, supporting, and promoting the health of the people of Oregon and southwest Washington.