Healey Awards $3M in Grants to Support Innovative Health Care Partnerships

Attorney General Maura Healey announced nearly $3 million in funding under a new grant program focused on addressing the social determinants of health, including nutrition, safe housing, violence prevention, and substance use, all of which impact the health of individuals, families and communities. AG Healey’s Social Determinants Partnership program will provide grants to promote health equity across Massachusetts to 13 partnerships made up of health care providers, social service organizations, and municipal government agencies.

“As a state and as a country, we continue to spend most of our health care dollars treating people who are already sick, rather than investing to keep people healthy,” said AG Healey. “These grants will support new partnerships to improve nutrition, housing, and other social determinants to protect the health of every Massachusetts resident.”

“The Greater Boston Food Bank applauds Attorney General Maura Healey for her vision and commitment to address the social determinants of health through cross-sector partnerships,” said Catherine D’Amato, president and CEO of GBFB. “At GBFB, we know that ending hunger will require more than access to healthy food. We are honored to partner with Cambridge Health Alliance-Revere, Good Measures, the Institute for Community Health and Tufts Health Plan to find new and innovative ways to address the scourge of hunger and food insecurity and are grateful to the Attorney General’s office for providing critical resources to make this ground-breaking work possible.”

“LUK Inc. is honored to receive funding from the Attorney General’s Office to support our Intensive Family Navigation program,” said Beth Barto, CEO of LUK Inc. “This program in partnership with UMass Memorial Health Alliance-Clinton Hospital creates community-clinical linkages by providing rapid response and increased access to address the needs of those with substance use disorders, including opioid addiction, and their families. The program helps stabilize the family system, reduce/eliminate substance use, and increase social supports. The agency is extremely thankful for the Commonwealth’s support for this programming.”

“We are thrilled to collaborate with our partners, who bring a long track record of success in addressing health related social needs, to address housing instability and homelessness among pregnant women in Boston,” said Christina Severin, president and CEO of Community Care Cooperative (C3). “This grant provides us the opportunity to address the racial and economic disparities in infant mortality and pre-term births in Boston and to potentially change the life-course for pregnant women and their children. We appreciate our progressive Attorney General for recognizing the importance of addressing social determinants of health and for her enthusiasm for our project.”

The Social Determinants Partnership grants are funded by recent settlements reached by the AG’s Health Care Division.

The funded partnerships are:

Everett/Revere: Cambridge Health Alliance in partnership with the Greater Boston Food Bank, Good Measures LLC, Tufts Health Plan, and Institute for Community Health. This partnership will operate a free monthly mobile food market in Revere and organize regular health fairs to provide health screenings, vaccinations, information on social services, assistance with enrollment in social services along with evaluating the impact of improving access to healthy produce on health and well-being.

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