As 2020 winds down, HEFN wishes a fond farewell to Steering Committee leaders whose terms end this year, and extends deepest gratitude for the myriad contributions they’ve made to the HEFN community.
As the unprecedented challenges of the past year overflow into 2021, HEFN is deeply grateful for the unwavering support of the environmental health and justice community that supported its work in 2020.
This past summer of violent pain, liberation struggle, and racial reckoning offers us complete opening to move more fully together through mud where our field has been stuck. A solid core of HEFN members are gathering to ensure healing and action space on racial justice – knowing that everything is absolutely at stake.
At a time when health philanthropy and all it supports are so pandemic-stressed, it may seem counterintuitive to focus on racial justice and climate action. But we and many colleagues believe that, in order to strengthen responses to the pressing crises we face, we must consider some converging determinants of health—racism, climate change, and COVID-19—together. Doing so is essential, not just for crisis management, but also for building resilient systems and infrastructure that enable everyone, particularly Black, Indigenous, and people of color communities, to breathe.
Jennie Curtis, the Executive Director of the Garfield Foundation, reflects back on the organization's 15 years of experience developing systems-informed collaborations as a solid strategy for understanding and shifting the root causes of complex problems and, ultimately, creating healthier outcomes for people and the planet.
HEFN is pleased to welcome Leslie Hatfield, GRACE Communications Foundation, and Anuja Mendiratta, Philanthropic + Nonprofit Consulting, to the Steering Committee.
Michael Lerner, co-founder and chair emeritus of HEFN, and president of the Jenifer Altman Foundation and Commonweal, shares how we can move beyond fear with the emergence of the coronavirus, and toward hope for the survival of love, wisdom, and compassion for others and for the world.
HEFN enters 2020 energized to sustain the momentum and accomplishments from the past year and offers sincere thanks to the dedicated community that championed and supported the network’s accomplishments in 2019.
Ansje Miller, HEFN's new executive director, relects upon her first HEFN annual meeting as the organization rounds out its 20th year, and invites the HEFN community to reflect and take stock of where we want to go from here.
If health advocates want to make serious headway in protecting children from the lifelong effects of lead poisoning, they must get both public- and private-sector buy-in and develop solutions that work for all, including landlords. Leaders in Cleveland, Ohio, and Buffalo, New York, have built strong public–private partnerships to deploy new tools to help landlords make their properties safe. Various foundations—both place-based and national—are funding efforts to prevent lead poisoning.
