Annual Report
Northern Virginia Health Foundation: A Caring Community
A report to our community: January 2007-June 2008
In keeping with our mandate to improve the health and health care of Northern Virginia’s most vulnerable residents, the Foundation’s first two grant cycles focused on helping safety net providers expand and improve their services. According to our Founding Board Chair Thomas C. Brown, Jr.: “We wanted our first grants to focus on activities that can build capacity to provide access to quality primary and specialty medical care and adult oral health for uninsured and underinsured people. We wanted to make a meaningful difference to those most in need.”
At its most basic, the term “safety net providers” can be defined as the group of healthcare providers in a community that deliver needed care, regardless of a patient’s ability to pay. In Northern Virginia, the healthcare safety net is a patchwork quilt of community health centers, privately funded free clinics, public health departments, and hospital emergency departments. Ask anyone who works at one of these provider organizations, or anyone who has sought services from them, and they will tell you that the services go a long way toward improving the health of those who have nowhere else to go, but there are significant holes and gaps in Northern Virginia’s safety net.