Florida Blue Foundation Awards $1.5 Million in Grants for Health Solutions to Aid Underserved Populations

Six Florida community-based health nonprofits will share $1.5 million in grants from the Florida Blue Foundation to fund innovative ideas, programs and best practice models for new health solutions to help underserved, multicultural populations across Florida. The grantees and their innovative programs are:

• Ability Housing of Northeast Florida – Duval County - $150,000

A state pilot project to improve access to health care and assist up to 90 vulnerable adults obtain services within the community. 

• Heartland Rural Health Network – Highlands & Hardee counties -  $250,000

A Diabetes Master Clinician Program utilizing community health workers to serve 700 low-income, uninsured, high-risk individuals.

• Miami Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired – Miami-Dade County -  $300,000

An innovative community program to assist underserved and low-income seniors with low-vision care. 

• Osceola Council on Aging – Osceola County - $300,000

Care Companion is a new concept in healthcare support using volunteers to engage, monitor and transport chronically ill clients to health providers to eliminate high usage of emergency room services.

• St. Petersburg Free Clinic, Inc. – Pinellas County - $200,000

A dental program providing the uninsured and underserved adults in the greater St. Petersburg area (South Pinellas County) access to free dental care and dentures to improve their overall health, enhance their quality of life and enable employment.

• University of Florida Foundation – Putnam & Union counties - $300,000

The innovative HealthStreet program focuses on the residents’ needs and concerns and removes their transportation barriers, ensuring that underserved people living in the two least-healthy counties in Florida will receive needed medical and social services.

The Foundation’s new focus area, called “Advance Innovation and Promote Solutions in the Health Care System,” supports programs that address critical issues of affordability, access and quality through efforts to improve the health of the underserved, multicultural populations and

communities across Florida. All of the programs will focus on access to affordable, nontraditional health service delivery.

About Florida Blue Foundation

Florida Blue Foundation enables healthy communities by making grants, building coalitions and rewarding best practices. More than three million people in Florida have received direct health services as a result of grants made to nonprofit organizations since its founding in 2001. Florida Blue Foundation is a trade name of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida Foundation, Inc., an Independent Licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association.

For more information about the Foundation, please visit www.bluefoundationfl.com.

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