Innovation Grants

Innovation, they say, is in the eye of the beholder.

In our view, community health innovation is a game-changing approach that not only improves lives, but positively impacts systems. In the best case, a more effective, equitable and sustainable path is paved that can emerge and spread as a national model. In every case, we look for the hallmarks of a smart approach that engages key stakeholders, willingly shares ownership and decision-making among partners, and creatively optimizes existing community resources and assets.

SLHI’s intent for Innovation Grants is to actively reduce structural and/or systemic gaps in access, outcomes, opportunities or treatment, starting where health starts, not where it ends. Funding provides opportunities for communities to develop and test new and varied solutions to systems-level challenges.

The remarkable part about calling for innovation lies in the breadth and depth of ideas that potential funding partners bring to the table, and what happens next as a result.

FY2015 marked the second year of SLHI’s call for Innovation Grant funding partners, and the first year that SLHI was honored to collaborate with the Arizona Community Foundation on a 2014-2015 grant. Click here to learn much more about our FY2015 funding partners.

Once again the community’s response helped us understand better how to behold “innovation,” and we look forward with great excitement to the coming year’s proposals.

 

Medical Assistance Grants

For SLHI, each dollar of available investment is an opportunity for optimization.

SLHI’s Medical Assistance grant funding has provided direct support to community partners that, in turn, assist low income (below 150 percent the federal poverty level), uninsured (or underinsured) Arizonans with screening, as well as vision and hearing assistance. Many of these funding streams have functioned on an ongoing basis since St. Luke’s Health Initiatives was formed in 1996.

For FY2015, SLHI initiated a proposal process that awards grants on a three-year cycle from available Medical Assistance funds, in alignment with the original donors’ wishes and our mission. Proposals are requested from nonprofits within the direct-service fields of vision and hearing to be funded. The process started with Vision grants funded from 2015-2018. It will continue with hearing grants that will be funded from 2016-2019. Each group of proposals are evaluated by diverse community panels and ranked, with the highest-ranked organizations receiving funding.