Health Affairs, 27, no. 1 (2008): 288-290 doi: 10.1377/hlthaff.27.1.288 © 2008 by Project HOPE	New Online Disparities in Health:   Obama aide on legislation   Smedley call to action   Shrink regulations first   A Real Policy Debate   Top 10 HA Articles Of '07

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GrantWatch

EDITOR’S NOTE: Some parts of the GrantWatch section are published on the Web only. The online-only material usually includes selected coverage of both recently announced grants and publications about or funded by foundations. (Reporting of selected grant outcomes and key personnel changes at foundations, as well as GrantWatch essays, reports, and interviews, are published in both print and online form.)

Online GrantWatch material is posted twice a month. Click here to sign up to receive an e-mail alert when new content is posted.

GrantWatch is funded in part by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Employee Benefits: Paid Sick Leave

Announcement of initiative and grants recently awarded:

“Nearly half of all private-sector workers and three-fourths of the working poor in the U.S. are not afforded paid sick days, according to recent studies,” said the Public Welfare Foundation on its Web site. (As a bit of background, in October 2007 the board of the foundation refocused its entire program structure and, in the process, incorporated its previously announced paid sick days effort within its new Workers’ Rights program, focused especially on “those most vulnerable to exploitation, such as contingent workers.”) Public Welfare says that it “believes that paid sick days should be a minimum labor standard across the American workforce, as is the case in 145 other nations, including nine of the ten most competitive economies.” The foundation makes grants in four categories in the area of paid sick days; these include “assessments of existing sick day policies and laws and development of new policy proposals” and research on how to effectively “engage the business community by demonstrating the benefits of paid sick days in terms of employee satisfaction, employee retention and public health.” Public Welfare invites those interested in applying for a grant to first send a letter of inquiry.

A 1 February 2008 press release noted that Public Welfare awarded three grants at its board meeting that day that were specifically described as supporting paid sick leave efforts. One-year grants were awarded to each of the following groups: Minnesota ACORN, in St. Paul, “to coordinate a grassroots organizing and public education effort around the need for paid sick days as a workers’ right in Minnesota;” Voices for Vermont’s Children, in Montpelier, “for coalition-building to create a strategic plan of action to secure paid sick days for Vermont workers”; and Women Employed Institute, in Chicago, “to fund advocacy and public education efforts to build support for paid sick days in Illinois.” Previous Public Welfare grants included two years of support for A Better Balance: The Work and Family Legal Center, in New York City, “for legal research, advice, and other assistance to organizations throughout the country working to secure paid sick days”; that grant was for $100,000. (Please note that these grantees may have received funding from other sources for their efforts.)

Publication received:

Family Values at Work: It’s about Time! Why We Need Minimum Standards to Ensure a Family-Friendly Workplace, MultiState Working Families Consortium, September 2007, 41 pp., http://www.9to5.org/familyvaluesatwork. Funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. This report, written by Richard A. Mendel and edited by Ellen Bravo, was published in conjunction with several organizations, including ACORN, the AFL-CIO, and the Service Employees International Union. The report notes that “there is strong evidence that rather than burdening employers, offering paid sick days and other forms of workplace flexibility actually boosts profits.” More specifically, the report says that “paid sick days limit the costs of ‘presenteeism’—the loss in productivity” when workers come to work with medical problems. “Paid sick days also limit the spread of flu and other contagious illnesses to other employees,” the report notes. That flexibility “also benefits taxpayers and society as a whole.” The report’s policy agenda includes a recommendation for paid sick days.

Related resources:

“Council Advances Sick-Leave Bill in D.C.: Workers Would Get Paid for Absences; Businesses Balk,” Nikita Stewart, Washington Post, 6 February 2008, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/05/AR2008020502782.html. The Accrued Sick and Safe Leave Act, if it receives final approval by the District of Columbia’s City Council in March 2008, would grant at least some “paid sick leave to all workers in the city.” The article notes that “San Francisco is the only U.S. city with a similar comprehensive law,” and the District’s bill “would allow victims of violence and abuse to take paid leave.”

“Paid Sick Days: Local Campaigns,” National Partnership for Women and Families, updated January 2008, http://www.nationalpartnership.org/site/PageServer?pagename=psd_map_states. This map and listing provides information on states and cities addressing paid sick days in 2007. The National Partnership held a Paid Sick Days Summit, funded by the Public Welfare Foundation, in July 2007.

Global Health

Announcements:

A quote:

In October 2007 at a forum in Seattle, Bill and Melinda Gates of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation called on those running for president of the United States to make a commitment to support the President’s Malaria Initiative, a $1.2 billion effort that was launched by President George W. Bush in 2005. According to a press release, Bill Gates said to the candidates, “If you win this office, you will inherit a record commitment to fighting malaria. The world needs you to sustain it and enhance it. Malaria will never be eradicated without the full support of the President of the United States.”

Initiative under way:

The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation’s $100 million African Health Initiative (AHI) was announced in a 27 September 2007 press release. Its aim is “to address the most critical obstacles to the delivery of effective and essential health services in sub-Saharan Africa: fragile and fragmented health systems and a dire shortage of health care workers.” This foundation will award funding over five to seven years to African-led Population Health Implementation and Training (PHIT) Partnerships. These partnerships will work on “innovative strategies to overcome barriers to integrated primary health care delivery,” the release said. Elaine Gallin of the foundation said in the release that “although funding for health in Africa has increased significantly in recent years, simple, inexpensive interventions . . . are still unavailable to many people because health systems do not function properly.” She explained that the AHI seeks to bring about “a change in approach to strengthening health systems, away from disease-specific funding and toward integrated models that significantly expand access to primary health care in Africa.” The foundation will work “to increase the efficiency of existing programs and fill critical gaps in funding.”

First, potential PHIT Partnerships were invited to submit letters of interest. According to a 1 February 2008 update, 137 teams responded. (Only teams working in Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Zambia were eligible.) The foundation and an expert review panel have evaluated those letters and invited each of twenty-nine teams to submit a proposal for a six-month planning grant of up to $150,000. Recipients of the planning grants will be announced in summer 2008. Finally, the funder “expects to award three to six multi-year implementation grants of $8 million to $20 million each” in 2009, the press release said. Those will be the PHIT Partnership grantees. An Advisory Council guides the AHI; its members include Jo Ivey Boufford of the New York Academy of Medicine and Adetokunbo Lucas of the Harvard School of Public Health.

Related resource:

Malaria and Children: Progress in Intervention Coverage, prepared by UNICEF on behalf of the Roll Back Malaria Partnership, October 2007, 70 pp., including appendices, http://www.unicef.org/health/files/MalariaOct6forweb_final.pdf. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria provided financial support for this publication.

Health Care Delivery

Report received:

No Appointment Needed: The Resurgence of Urgent Care Centers in the United States, Robin M. Weinick and Renée M. Betancourt, September 2007, 28 pp., http://www.chcf.org/topics/view.cfm?itemid=133465. Funded by the California HealthCare Foundation (CHCF). Although the term urgent care center is somewhat poorly defined, the CHCF said in an e-mail alert that “the scope of services [these centers] provide generally falls between that of a primary care doctor’s office and an emergency department.” The report says that it has background on centers in the United States but also “includes specific information on urgent care centers in California.”

Health Policy (in general)

Announcement:

RWJF Investigator Awards in Health Policy Research Call for Applications. This program, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), “supports highly qualified researchers from a range of fields whose cross-cutting and innovative ideas promise to contribute meaningfully to improving health and health care policy in the United States,” said Lynn Rogut, the program’s deputy director. “The program offers unrivaled networking opportunities and is a rare funding source for investigator-initiated projects that are broad in scope, innovative in approach, and have national policy relevance.” The program will award grants of up to $335,000 for projects of two to three years' duration.

The deadline for submitting letters of intent for this program is 26 March 2008. For more information and the call for applications, go to http://www.investigatorawards.org/applications/.

Recent report:

Bending the Curve: Options for Achieving Savings and Improving Value in U.S. Health Spending, Cathy Schoen, Stuart Guterman, Anthony Shih, Jennifer Lau, Sophie Kasimow, Anne Gauthier, and Karen Davis of the Commonwealth Fund, December 2007, 87 pp., including appendix, http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/publications_show.htm?doc_id=620087. Funded by the Commonwealth Fund. The authors look at fifteen federal policy options “and their potential for lowering health spending over the next 10 years, relative to projected trends.” Examples of these options include promoting the use of health information technology, “reducing obesity,” and negotiating or setting price limits in Medicare prescription drug plans. The authors also tried combining nine of the policy options (as a group) with an Insurance Connector strategy, which “builds on and connects current public and private group insurance through the creation of a new national entity that would offer a structured choice of private health plans as well as a Medicare option to individuals and small employers.” The results of doing so would be expected to lower national health expenditures, the authors estimate. The authors point out several themes in the report’s results. Among those themes are that “a multifaceted approach that is combined with health insurance coverage for all can be designed to achieve substantial reductions in future spending growth.” Also, “value means more than savings in national health expenditures.” Another theme is that “reaching consensus will require a focus on the potential gain for the nation”; the authors caution that “approaches that substantially reduce projected expenditures over time will by definition decrease revenues for some segments of the health care sector.” Under contract to Commonwealth, the Lewin Group modeled the policy options and did the estimates “using specifications provided by the authors.” (This report was prepared for the Commonwealth Fund Commission on a High Performance Health System, but it does not necessarily reflect the views of that panel or its members, the document states. The report’s aim is “solely to stimulate debate.”)

Report received:

Communicating for Policy Change, Grantmakers In Health (GIH), November 2007, 21 pp., http://www.gih.org/usr_doc/Communicating_for_Policy_Change_FINAL.pdf. Funded by the California Endowment, George Gund Foundation, and Missouri Foundation for Health. Geared toward foundations, this issue brief synthesizes the highlights of a GIH meeting in November 2006 that focused on “how health grantmakers can make effective use of communications strategies in their efforts to change public policy.” Anne Schwartz, formerly with GIH, wrote the report.

Related online resource:

AcademyHealth launched HSRmethods.org in January 2008. This Web site “provides researchers collaborating across disciplines with an easy-to-use tool for understanding health services research methods,” according to a press release. The Web site is funded in part by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), AstraZeneca, and Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA).