The Fund for a Healthy Rhode Island (FHRI) was created in February 2008 when Blue Cross Blue Shield of Rhode Island contributed $20 million to create a permanent endowment at the Rhode Island Foundation to support “projects designed to have the greatest impact on the provision of quality and affordable healthcare services in Rhode Island.”

With input from key stakeholders, increasing primary care access, utilization, and quality was the selected focus for the 2009, 2012, and 2015 FHRI grant cycles. This approach was in line with the Foundation’s contemporaneous, and continuing, emphasis on supporting primary care as a core component of its strategy for improving health outcomes for Rhode Islanders.

Given increasing awareness of the role that factors outside of the clinical setting play in achieving improved health outcomes and reducing health disparities, the focus of the 2018 FHRI grant cycle shifted from primary care to supporting place-based collaborations that address health disparities and improve population health in Rhode Island communities.

Current Focus

Beginning in early 2019, the Foundation has convened and led a Long-Term Health Planning committee, made up of a group of local health and health care industry experts, who have collaborated to set and sustain a 10-year plan for improving health in Rhode Island—the Health in Rhode Island vision. Committee members have sought to identify the most pressing needs and commit to state-level coordination and institutional decision-making that will address those needs over the long-term.

The Health in Rhode Island vision includes four main priorities:

• Provide the most appropriate care for people in the most appropriate setting.
• Focus upstream on root causes and invest in affordable housing, food security, and transportation to address underlying inequities and influencers of health disparities.
• Improve behavioral health outcomes by focusing on access to care, coordination of care, and prevention.
• Reduce wasteful spending in order to redirect those resources to social determinants and improve affordability.

This long term plan also reflects an important reality that is mirrored in the past changes to the focus of FHRI funding opportunities: that improving our state’s healthcare system is vital, but that we must also focus on increasing investment in the Social Determinants of Health and cross-sector partnerships if we want to be successful in addressing the significant racial and ethnic disparities we see across many of our state’s health outcomes.

To help reinforce and achieve these priorities, the Foundation is issuing two FHRI RFPs as part of this cycle of the program. The first was issued in 2021 and focused on responding to behavioral health needs in the community. This second RFP of the FHRI focuses on supporting the health sector workforce, both in and beyond the traditional healthcare delivery system. Supporting the health sector workforce is a core priority of the Long-Term Health Planning committee, as well as the focus on an ongoing public-private health workforce planning process co-convened by Executive Office of Health and Human Services, Department of Labor and Training, and the Office of the Postsecondary Commissioner, for which the Foundation is an active partner.

Long term health sector workforce challenges and shortages across diverse care settings, both clinical and community-based, have been laid bare over the past few years – revealed and accelerated by the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Building and sustaining a workforce that can provide high-quality care and services to Rhode Islanders necessitates addressing a number of interrelated issues. One of those issues is ensuring that the health sector workforce better reflects the communities it serves.

There is increased awareness that creating an environment of culturally relevant and appropriate treatment reduces a significant obstacle for equitable health service delivery, and evidence of improved care effectiveness, experience, and retention when patients share a racial and/or cultural identity with their care providers. A workforce with relevant lived experience is a critical piece of offering cultural competent, high-quality care. Yet there is often a disconnect between the demographics of health providers and the population served in Rhode Island. While some entry-level, direct care occupations have a concentration of diverse employees, most occupations are not sufficiently representative of the broader community. The need to grow and sustain a diverse workforce that can improve health quality, access, and outcomes—and advance health equity—is of heightened importance given existing racial and ethnic disparities in health outcomes have been compounded by the inequitable impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

There are a range of obstacles to building a more representative health sector workforce, including encouraging and supporting more students from diverse backgrounds to be interested and supported in entering the workforce, ensuring that undergraduate and graduate programs are attracting and retaining students from diverse backgrounds, supporting robust employee attraction initiatives, including targeted loan repayment programs, and ensuring competitive compensation.

Alongside all of these is a need for more focus and resources on workforce retention. There is clear evidence that retention saves money, improves work environments and culture, and improves productivity and quality of patient care. Vital in its own right, focusing on improving retention is also associated with improved attraction. This is not just because employers with the necessary supports and programs are more attractive to prospective employees, but also because people are more interested in working within organizations (and sectors) where they see a workforce that reflects themselves.

For the purposes of this RFP, the Foundation welcomes proposals to retain a racially, culturally, ethnically, and linguistically diverse health workforce.

The Foundation recognizes that this moment in time is one of heightened vulnerability for health providers and nonprofit organizations across the continuum of delivery settings. We also recognize that there are structural factors to increasing retention that are beyond the scope of a one-time grant program (e.g., reimbursement rates).

To Apply

Click here to apply. Applications must be received by November 4, 2022 at 5:00 p.m.

Notifications

Notifications of decisions will be made in February 2023.