A significant part of total health is the overall health and well being of our communities, and we try to highlight examples of programs working toward total health on this blog. After all, with the number of American adults without health insurance increasing to 17.1 percent in 2011, there continues to be a growing need for programs and initiatives in our communities that support good health and healthy living.
Kaiser Permanente recently released its community benefit report, which highlights programs that benefited from the $1.8 billion the health organization devoted to its community benefit activities in 2011. These investments included $68 million for community health initiatives and environmental stewardship, $24.6 million for grants to safety net partnerships, and $119 million for medical research (that’s 4,000 research and evaluation studies conducted and 1,100 articles published in professional journals on topics like diabetes, childhood obesity, HIV, and genomics).
You can read more about the report here, including great stories of total health in action at the community level.
