The Sisters of Charity Foundation of Cleveland continues to think and act boldly when it comes to addressing health and health disparities in the Central Neighborhood of Cleveland.

The Healthy Eating, Active Living (HEAL) strategy seeks to address some of the root causes of poor health in the neighborhood, including challenges to accessing healthy food, engaging in physical activity and accessing economic opportunities.

For individuals living in poverty, significant disparities remain in health status and access to health care services. These disparities are interrelated with gaps in income and education levels, adequacy of housing and other social conditions.

We focus our grantmaking to achieve targeted health outcomes in Cuyahoga County, particularly in the Central Neighborhood.

Advancements in medical science have not reduced health disparities: those higher rates of premature death, chronic diseases and other poor health outcomes that racial and ethnic minorities have in comparison to non-minorities.

The differences start at birth, with higher rates of low-birth weight and infant mortality for African Americans, Hispanic/Latinos and other minority groups. And the gap continues with minorities experiencing higher rates of diabetes, cancer, heart disease, obesity and asthma.

Barriers to health equity result from socioeconomic conditions, including education, economic instability, housing conditions, as well as cultural issues. But when people of color have similar levels of access to care, health insurance and education as White people, they still often receive poorer quality of health care.

The Sisters of Charity Foundation of Cleveland seeks to improve health outcomes for those most in need and is working to reduce health disparities in Cleveland and in the Central Neighborhood. The foundation, which views health equity as vital to supporting families’ well being, as well as building and sustaining stable neighborhoods and reducing poverty, has awarded more than $5 million in grants to its Health Literacy and Healthy Eating & Active Living programs.

The Foundation also supports health policy organizations, including the Health Policy Institute of Ohio and the Cuyahoga Health Access Partnership (CHAP), as they pursue objectives promoting or improving government policies to reduce health disparities and expand health care access, as well as supports the policy goals of the Catholic Health Association of the United States.

The Sisters of Charity Foundation of Cleveland is the lead of a statewide funder collaborative known as the Ohio Regional Convergence Partnership (ORCP), established in 2011 to advance the vision of healthy people in healthy places in the state of Ohio. As a funder collaborative, ORCP aims to support multi-field partnerships in achieving equitable and sustainable environmental and policy changes specifically around increased access to healthy foods and physical activity. Current members include the HealthPath Foundation of Ohio, Saint Luke’s Foundation of Cleveland, CareSource Foundation, and the Sisters of Charity Foundation of Cleveland. Previous members include Interact for Health, Kaiser Permanente, Osteopathic Heritage Foundations and the Wean Foundation.

The ORCP is one of 14 regional convergence partnerships aligned with the Convergence Partnership. Formed in 2006, the partnership is a collaborative of funders whose goal of policy and environmental change will help reinvent communities of healthy people living in healthy places.