UnitedHealthcare is awarding $11.1 million in grants to 66 nonprofit organizations across 12 states in an effort to better identify and address social determinants of health among uninsured individuals and underserved communities.
"It's really important that we consider the factors that happen outside the clinical setting, and that's what these grants are really geared toward," Olivia Jefferson, vice president of social responsibility at UnitedHealthcare, told Becker's. "We always want to make sure that we're centering the voices of the people most impacted, and that's why we try to work with nonprofit organizations that are really close to the issues that we want to address as it relates to social determinants of health."
The grants are part of a program that launched in 2018 called Empowering Health. Since that time, the initiative has awarded more than $62 million in grants that have reached 11 million people in 30 states and Washington, D.C.
Ms. Jefferson shared that UnitedHealthcare works with its local health plans to better address specific issues happening within each market around the country, along with using data from America's Health Rankings reports, which are published by the United Health Foundation annually.
More detailed grant information is available here.