A healthy community isn’t just about access to high-quality, reliable health care. Individuals and families also need access to good jobs, opportunities to build wealth, and thriving, locally-owned businesses. Kaiser Permanente understands how economic factors can shape well-being, especially in communities of color that often don’t benefit from regional or national prosperity. Learn how LISC is collaborating with Kaiser Permanente to support locally-driven strategies that spark economic growth in under-invested places.

LISC’s Health Access Fund helps people living on low incomes, in rural and urban places, get to and from the destinations that play into their health and well being, from doctor's appointments to social service centers to the grocery store. Last year, with support from Uber, PayPal, and Walgreens, that amounted to 137,000 rides, helping upend a host of barriers to accessing healthcare and essential services.

Diana Gregory Outreach Services (DGOS) began as a grocery-delivery service out of a pick-up truck in 2009. Since then, the organization has grown to support 20,000 seniors, many of whom are veterans, with its mobile food drives and nutrition education initiatives. With support from the Walmart Foundation, a LISC Equitable Food Access grant is helping DGOS hire more staff and increase the number of veterans and others they can serve.

The COVID-19 pandemic and gaps in recent drug breakthroughs have highlighted the need for representation in clinical research. LISC’s supplier diversity effort is helping drive economic and healthcare equity by supporting innovative businesses behind essential technologies and products. Thanks to financing through the Abbott-LISC Initiative to Support Diverse Businesses in Health, Tranquil Clinical Research can advance efforts to center the needs of communities most impacted by disease through treatment trials, drug development, and more.

In a new blog, LISC’s Matt Josephs connects the dots from community development policy discussions to actual funding streams, highlighting positive local outcomes that would not otherwise move forward. "It would be nearly impossible to unlock the tens of billions of dollars of private financing needed each year to scale up progress without strong federal support,” he writes. "We are grateful for the confidence federal agencies have shown in LISC and others in the community development finance field…"

The economic downturn of 2008 forced retired Fortune 100 executive, Artura Taylor, back into the workforce. Instead of working for someone else, she launched her own business, TDG Scientific, to supply lab equipment, chemicals, PPE, and more to the corporate and government sectors. Like many Black business owners, Taylor found it difficult to access capital to scale her business. Thanks to financing through the Abbott-LISC Initiative to Support Diverse Businesses in Health, Taylor’s business now has the resources to invest in its IT infrastructure and grow its bid department to pursue more contracts.