Greater Minnesota Housing Fund’s Housing & Health Equity Initiative is excited to announce the inaugural class of fellows for its Minnesota Healthcare Learning Cohort. Six of the top ten health systems in Minnesota will participate in the fellows’ program, each sending a team of professionals to advance their organizations’ social determinants of health investment goals. The 32 fellows will spend a year learning together about community impact investments and practices, from across the country, to address social determinants of health through housing. Fellows will bring learnings back to their respective institutions to inform actions related to impact investing in housing and health.
Participating healthcare institution teams include Allina Health, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota, CentraCare, Children’s Minnesota, Essentia Health, and M Health Fairview.
“I’m particularly excited at the mix of institutions involved,” said Eric Muschler, director of the Housing & Health Initiative. “We have two large rural healthcare providers, one statewide insurance payor organization, and key hospitals and systems serving the metro region and beyond.”
Each team includes cross-departmental representatives and the treasury or investment office at each organization. Together, they will bring their collective perspectives to address housing as a critical social determinant of health. Teams bring with them a purpose statement which relates to the use of investment resources to advance upstream community health through housing.
This is the right moment to deeply engage our healthcare partners and innovatively advance housing as a community health imperative, because of the affordable housing crisis in Minnesota; opportunities to access significant state-level resources to address housing needs; and the increased awareness across all sectors that affordable housing is a shared priority.
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