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The Vulnerable Populations Portfolio is committed to meeting emerging health needs of communities by identifying smarter, cost-effective ways to address problems of the most vulnerable. We seek new and different partners to expand our reach that can bring smart, innovative solutions to our communities.

There are four characteristics that we look for in prospective grantees:

• 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. From improving the safety of neighborhoods to changing the way we think about violence, to bringing recess, play and conflict resolution skills back to the playground, our grantees find innovative ways to make better health possible in the context of difficult life circumstances.
• The ability to develop practical solutions to broad social challenges ranging from mental illness to school environments that don’t promote learning to deteriorating elder care facilities.
• The vision to work in nontraditional environments to solve problems that affect health. By working outside the usual areas of health focus, in places as diverse as schools, streets and jails, our grantees go to where health starts to introduce change. Our programs give people who need it most the opportunity and the means to take personal responsibility for improving their health and the quality of their lives.
• 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.

To receive e-mail notification when RWJF releases new calls for proposals, sign up for RWJF Funding Alert E-mails or add a feed of CFPs to your news reader. (Help: what are news feeds?)

What We Don't Fund

We will not provide funding for efforts that do not incorporate the social factors that drive health status as part of their proposed model.

We do not fund documentaries, research, programs that address a single medical condition, or provide core support for free or safety net clinics, disease management models, or well tested models whose effectiveness has already been established and that have been widely disseminated.

While RWJF awards most of its grants in response to calls for proposals, we also award grants in response to unsolicited proposals in our Vulnerable Populations Portfolio.

Learn more about our strategy and the issues we are seeking to address in this area:

• Download our complete overview