Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

Founded	1972
Founder	Robert Wood Johnson II
Focus	Healthcare reform, quality of care, childhood obesity, human capital, vulnerable populations, public health, health coverage
Location	Princeton, New Jersey
Area served	Health and health care
Method	Grantmaking and social change
Key people	Risa Lavizzo-Mourey
Employees	283
Website	www.rwjf.org

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) is the United States' largest philanthropy focused solely on health; it is based in Princeton, New Jersey.^[1][2] The foundation's goal, through the use of grants, is "to improve the health and health care of all Americans."^[3] The foundation has $9.2 billion in assets, generating grants approaching $400 million a year.^[4]

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation makes grants for a range of health issues, including access to care, childhood obesity, and training for doctors and nurses. Other topics of interest to the foundation include social and economic factors that can impact health, including quality of housing, violence, poverty, and access to fresh food.^[5]

History

Robert Wood Johnson II built the family firm of Johnson & Johnson into the world's largest health products maker. He died in 1968. He established the foundation at his death with 10,204,377 shares of the company's stock.^[6][7]

Leadership

The foundation is headed by Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, who was named president and CEO in December 2002. Lavizzo-Mourey's succeeded Steve Schroeder, the foundation's president between 1990 and 2002. Under Schroeder's leadership, the foundation played a major role in curbing tobacco use in the US, spending $446 million from 1991 to 2003 toward that goal, and it plans to use those experiences to shape its attack on childhood obesity. Since 1995, the number of adult and teenage smokers has declined 12.6 percent and 18 percent, respectively.^[6]

Grantmaking areas

These interest areas include:

Childhood Obesity: Backing projects that help reverse the childhood obesity epidemic by 2015 by improving access to affordable, healthy food and providing more opportunities for children to play and exercise in their schools and communities.

In April 2007, the foundation committed $500 million to fighting childhood obesity.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's grants are focused on driving public policy initiatives and changing community environments. These include programs that encourage supermarkets to return to low-income communities and that improve nutrition, physical activity, and staff wellness in schools nationwide. The foundation partnered with The Food Trust, a non-profit in Philadelphia that helps make fresh, affordable food accessible to the underprivileged and educates children about healthy eating. The Food Trust’s research on childhood obesity led the Philadelphia school system to ban soda vending machines from all of its schools, the strongest measure in the country.^[8]

Health Insurance Coverage: Supporting policies and initiatives that expand health care coverage and increase enrollment in programs so that anyone in the U.S. can have affordable health care coverage.

Cost, Quality, and Value: Promoting efforts to make high quality care available cost effectively. The foundation funds projects that study the relationships between the cost of care and results, develop ways to cut waste in the health care system, and advance research into how people’s health is affected by factors such as education, transportation, clean air, and public or business policies. For example, in 2009, the foundation donated $2 million to Health Leads, a national health care organization that works with doctors in participating clinics to “prescribe” food, fuel assistance, housing vouchers, or other resources for their patients the same way they might prescribe medication.^[9]

Human Capital: Supporting projects that help health professionals develop leadership skills, encourage networking between different disciplines, and increase the diversity of people working in health care.

Vulnerable Populations: Giving grants to initiatives that study and develop approaches for addressing social factors, such as housing, poverty, and education, that can impact the health of vulnerable people, including low-income children and their families, frail older adults, and adults with disabilities. The foundation is focusing in particular on mental health and violence prevention, especially in early childhood.^[10]

Pioneer Portfolio: Making grants to promote approaches to entrenched problems, identify emerging health issues, and build new models for providing care. For example, the foundation gave nearly $5 million to Project ECHO, based at the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center. ECHO uses online videoconferencing to link primary-care doctors, nurses, and physicians’ assistants with specialists to train them to treat and help manage complex conditions, such as hepatitis C and opiate addiction.^[11]

Awards

• Steve Patterson Award for Excellence in Sports Philanthropy. The award was established in 2005, in memory of Steve Patterson, an NBA player and college coach, who believed in and practiced the use of the power of sports philanthropy to make a difference.^[12]

Criticism

The American Beverage Institute, a restaurant industry trade group which opposes many anti-drunk-driving measures, and the Center for Consumer Freedom, a coalition of restaurant and food companies (quoting the American Beverage Institute), have labeled RWJF as anti-alcohol or neo-prohibitionist.^[13][14]

See also

• Faith in Action
• List of wealthiest foundations
• Office of Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse
• Public health
• Wellness in school

References

External links

• Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
• Local Initiative Funding Partners
• RWJ Health Policy Fellowships
• RWJF Health and Society Scholars
• Top 10 Wealthiest Charitable Foundations