Health Equity

Funding Area / Health Equity

Our founder Dr. Ron Naito devoted his career to treating the whole patient. Accordingly, we embrace the World Health Organization’s definition of health: “Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”

We see significant intersection between this funding priority and our other priorities – all connected by healing. For our health equity funding area, we seek applications from organizations or initiatives that work to improve health outcomes, decrease health inequities, and increase individual and social well-being.

This includes (but isn’t limited to) organizations that:

• Increase historically marginalized communities’ access to sustained health care either internationally or domestically, including both frontline service providers and initiatives that advocate for policy or market reforms.
• Focus on lasting health outcomes, such as eyesight restoration, disability supports, reproductive justice, and other health interventions that impact individuals’ long-term health and capacity to thrive.
• Increase equitable, sustainable access to healthy foods, including frontline interventions, nutritional policy, and food sovereignty and systems initiatives.
• Improve health outcomes through clean air, water, hygiene, and anti-toxin/-pollutant advocacy, policy, and frontlines interventions.
• Provide support (safety, emergency care, legal services, basic needs, referrals) and empowerment to people experiencing violence, displacement, poverty, and other traumas.
• Combat misinformation contributing to adverse health outcomes.
• Diversify participation in health research, policy, and medical care to advance more equitable health outcomes.

What we don’t fund:

• Medical, pharmaceutical, or medical technology research and development or usage expansion.
• Prognosis-specific research and support organizations (eg. cancer, Parkinson’s).
• Orphanages.
• Clean water or anti-toxin initiatives that affect only one watershed or community.
• Animal rescue or therapy (despite our love for them!).
• Disaster relief/emergency medical initiatives.
• Individual housing projects, although we do support housing advocacy.
• Hospital systems and their affiliate clinics or provider groups. Note: we will consider applications from stand-alone 501(c)3 community clinics or clinic groups.

We don’t fund these areas not because we don’t value them, but because either: 1) we have determined that we can’t fund sufficiently broadly to be equitable or effective; or 2) we feel like other funders, with larger assets or more expert staff, are better placed to support this work. We are grateful for your work even if you are not eligible for our funding. Please also visit our Sustainable Communities and Climate pages: something that may not seem like a good fit here may be a good fit elsewhere.

Please review our grants overview and general eligibility criteria. We also recommend you explore our grants history for examples of previous health equity initiatives funded. Thank you for your consideration.