To ensure that our programs are effective, we have implemented an Impact Framework that reflects our different grantmaking practices and areas of focus. The framework is a way of thinking explicitly about our efforts as a whole. It recognizes that we do several different kinds of grantmaking and that improving the ways these grants work together can enhance the measurable progress we make toward our overall mission. The framework groups most of our grantmaking into four clusters we call Portfolios—Targeted, Human Capital, Vulnerable Populations and Pioneer. These portfolios represent our commitment to stick with a set of issues over time.
Targeted
As we address America's critical health and health care issues, the need for prompt action and impact is also evident. Within the Targeted Portfolio, we have chosen four critical issues to address head-on by setting specific time-limited objectives, benchmarks, a plan of action, and a budget to accomplish each objective. These four issues are:
Human Capital
Since its inception, RWJF has recognized the importance of investing in the backbone of our health and health care delivery system—its people. A diverse, well-trained leadership and workforce is essential to improve the health and health care of all Americans. The Human Capital Portfolio focuses on supporting new methods in leadership development, building diversity in the health professions, increasing the number of health and health care professionals trained in quality improvement methods, addressing the nurse and nurse faculty shortage, and engaging the vast network of RWJF program alumni to create opportunities that help the Foundation and American society benefit more extensively from these leaders’ experience and expertise.
Vulnerable Populations
Improving health requires acknowledging that factors such as poverty, violence, inadequate housing and education contribute to poor health. The Vulnerable Populations Portfolio identifies new pathways for improved health by recognizing the integral relationship between our health and where and how we live, work, learn and play. To overcome these nonmedical factors that lead to poor health, we fund a diverse group of innovative programs that address long-standing health issues within their broader social context through sensible, sustainable solutions that have potential for widespread replication and national impact. Our programs share four unique characteristics:
- The opportunity to make better health possible by addressing the social barriers that stand in the way not only of individuals, but also of entire communities.
- The ability to develop practical solutions to broad social challenges.
- The vision to work in nontraditional environments to solve problems that affect health.
- The capacity to create immediate and lasting change. Our programs create immediate health improvement for the vulnerable people directly touched by their efforts, and reach exponentially outward by seeding change within a field, ultimately offering the potential for long-term, sustainable and broad scale health improvement within entire communities and ideas that can foment change across the nation.
Pioneer
We seek and support innovative, often unconventional ideas and projects that may lead to breakthrough solutions in health and health care. Projects in the Pioneer Portfolio are typically future-oriented and explore solutions at the cutting edge of health and health care. We seek potentially disruptive ideas not only from the mainstream of health and health care but also from sources beyond these fields. We invest in innovators whose bold ideas and rigorous approaches move us beyond incremental improvements and accelerate the quest for change. In this way, the Pioneer Portfolio provides a distinct alternative to other Foundation programs that focus on targeted problems or populations.