The Mother Cabrini Health Foundation awarded 514 grants totaling $172 million to support nonprofit organizations addressing community health needs and disparities in health outcomes across New York.
The foundation refined its grantmaking strategy over the past year to focus on five core program areas: Access to Healthcare, Basic Needs, Healthcare Workforce, Mental and Behavioral Health and a General Fund. This includes support for increasing access to medical care among underserved communities, addressing social determinants of health like food and housing, building a more diverse healthcare workforce amid staffing shortages, and supporting mental and behavioral care for vulnerable New Yorkers.
In Brooklyn, 63 programs are receiving over $23 million to address a range of urgent community and health-related needs, including: $1 million to St. John's Bread and Life’s emergency food hub and mobile marketplace expansion in Brooklyn, $500,000 to Providence House, which enhances stability and long-term independence for homeless and justice-involved women and families in supportive housing, and $400,000 to Mixteca to support a mental health and resilience program for asylum seekers.
Grant recipients include community-based organizations, healthcare providers, food banks, social service centers, nursing homes, schools, federally qualified health centers and trade associations.
“Our grantees are on the front lines each and every day helping to improve outcomes for underserved New Yorkers," said Alfred F. Kelly, Jr., executive chairman of Visa and Chair of the Mother Cabrini Health Foundation Board.
Core program areas and grantees in 2024 include:
$43 million to help New Yorkers meet their basic needs so they can overcome challenges that impact their ability to build healthy lives. Funded programs include: Home HeadQuarters, whose mission is to create housing opportunities in central and upstate New York for individuals and families and improve the communities in which they live, and Ariva Inc., a Bronx-based financial counseling and tax prep organization offering free services in Spanish.
$28 million to expand access to healthcare to ensure all New Yorkers can access the health services they need, when and where they need them, without financial hardship. Funded programs include: Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center’s Mobile Health Unit, which offers health screenings and healthcare education for underserved and immigrant communities in New York City, and Loretto Management Corporation’s opening of a dedicated 40-bed memory special care unit at its skilled nursing community The Commons on St. Anthony in Cayuga County.
$22 million to build and expand New York’s healthcare workforce to improve access to care, quality of care, and cultural competency. Funded programs include: Calvary Hospital’s training program to expand palliative care, hospice care, and end of life care in the Bronx, and Associated Medical Schools of New York’s Diversity in Medicine scholarship.
$20 million to expand mental and behavioral health services. Funded programs include: Finger Lakes Systems’ Common Ground Health’s efforts to improve infant and early childhood mental and relational health and emotional needs in Rochester and the Finger Lakes region and The New York Foundling, which provides trauma-informed individual and family counseling for NYC youth in foster care.
$30 million to the General Fund to support 89 projects that contribute to the overall improved health and wellbeing of New Yorkers. Funded programs include: Kids in Need of Defense, which provides legal and social services to unaccompanied migrant children in New York, and Albany Housing Coalition’s case management programs, which connect homeless and at-risk veterans with supportive housing, employment, and resources for success.
An additional $29 million will support special initiatives dedicated to specific populations, such as people with disabilities, older adults, and immigrant communities.
In the five years since its inception, the Foundation has now awarded approximately 2,700 grants totaling more than $800 million.
