News

Eskenazi Health Foundation is grateful to receive over $8.5 million in funding from Regenstrief Foundation and Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation to address social determinants of health (SDOH) and health disparities throughout Indianapolis. These funds, allocated to the Beyond Barriers campaign, are already going to work to improve health and life expectancy in Indianapolis by breaking down barriers to health care for our most vulnerable residents.

The Fairbanks Foundation’s contribution of $3 million will help establish three Health Equity Zones in Indianapolis. These Health Equity Zones unite community stakeholders and local organizations to tackle long-term SDOH, enhancing quality of life and life expectancy for all residents. By combining robust SDOH screening with traditional primary care, the Health Equity Zones ensure equitable access and affordability for all, regardless of socioeconomic status. Additionally, Fairbanks Foundation’s funding will fuel innovative initiatives targeting the root causes of health disparities and enhancing health equity across the community.

The Regenstrief Foundation funding of more than $5.5 million is primarily aimed at assessing the effectiveness of the Health Equity Zones through evaluation. Rather than conducting a single evaluation of integrating social care with medical care, Eskenazi Health will conduct dozens of studies to demonstrate the various components of the Health Equity Zones. “Think of these studies as individual puzzle pieces,” says Christopher Callahan, M.D., Eskenazi Health physician and Chief Research and Development Officer. “As we start to put the puzzle pieces together, we will then begin to answer this much larger, more global question about integrating social care with medical care. Additionally, if there are 1,000 pieces to this puzzle, half or more than half are already in place. We already know that hungry people need food. We know that if we control diabetes, kidney failure is less likely. So much of this work is designing the infrastructure that helps people, especially those who encounter barriers to care, get the intervention we know already works.”

Eskenazi Health Foundation is grateful to Fairbanks Foundation and Regenstrief Foundation for their generous support and commitment to advancing health equity in Indianapolis, one neighbor at a time.