Priorities

As a result of our recent strategic planning effort, the Foundation shifted its focus away from our historic funding of disease and population-specific research and support, facilities, and equipment. Today, the Foundation’s priority is to seed innovative initiatives that can:

• Create new paradigms and conversations for health reform: We will strive to engage the expertise of “thought leaders” across several industries and from various perspectives to start new conversations, design innovative system models, and shift existing paradigms toward a system of promoting good health and resilience.
  
  
• Explore alternatives to care, including prevention and integrating integrative medicine: Current approaches to care in the U.S. are largely predicated on increased specialization, biochemical science, and disease intervention. We will support initiatives that expand and integrate the array of preventive, diagnostic, and treatment alternatives. The Foundation is interested in traditional and integrative medicine, emerging global technology, and other approaches that acknowledge the complexity of the mind, body, and spirit. Our goal is to embrace the array of safe, effective, and affordable options available for diagnosis, treatment, and well-being.
  
  
• Improve people’s health through systemic changes: We will support projects that implement and test the model designs identified through other funding priorities. In addition, we are interested in projects that examine the key assumptions, ethical questions, workforce issues, and measurements that create aids or barriers for the systemic changes needed to improve the health of our communities. In general, we will fund model projects that have a clear path for replication as part of broader, systemic reform.
  
  
• Design strategies that build a momentum for change: Knowing that change is difficult, we will support initiatives that seek to understand and implement strategies to foster a proactive momentum for change. We will fund efforts that help to validate and seamlessly move to better models for health and healthcare.

The Fannie E. Rippel Foundation will take several approaches to its funding process. Within the grant-making process, we will invite proposals from innovators who we believe can make progress toward systemic changes in the areas noted above. At other times, we believe progress can be better accomplished through direct charitable activities (DCA’s), which are initiatives that our Foundation will help to lead or to staff. For certain areas of interest, we anticipate either of the funding approaches will utilize a competitive RFP process. For those situations, a standard electronic RFP process will be established. These approaches to funding provide the Rippel Foundation with the flexibility it needs to best strategically invest our limited resources.