In the Community

July 30, 2010

Kaiser Permanente’s 2009 Community Benefit Report Now Available Online

Titled ‘Navigating by Heart’, the Report Shares Details about Kaiser Permanente’s $1.7 billion investment in 2009 in the communities it serves

The 2009 Community Benefit Report highlights Kaiser Permanente’s work to improve access to high-quality health care, to help create healthy environments, and to discover and share new health knowledge.

While these activities are always important, they became even more vital in 2009, as the national and global recession deepened. Last year, through grants to 2,098 organizations and our continued participation in programs for low-income individuals and families, we invested more than $1.7 billion in our communities. This was a 43 percent increase over 2008.

Kaiser Permanente worked in 2009 to further three important corporate citizenship causes:  Healthy people. Healthy environments. New health knowledge.

Here are a few highlights from an exceptional year:

• To give more people better access to health care, our care and coverage contributions totaled $1.3 billion, an increase of 33 percent over the previous year.
• We provided grants to 378 safety net organizations nationwide, increasing our financial, technical, and clinical support to more than $61 million. This is up 65 percent from 2008.
• Our Healthy Eating and Active Living (HEAL) programs promoted healthy eating in hard times. We redoubled our support of food banks and nutrition programs.
• To create a healthier environment, we focused on four areas that would have the greatest impact on health: safe chemicals, climate action, waste reduction, and access to healthy food. In each area, we have begun to achieve measurable successes.
• To develop and share new health knowledge, our investigators conducted more than 3,500 research and evaluation studies and published almost 800 journal articles.
• We invested more than $81 million to educate health care professionals in the communities Kaiser Permanente serves. We trained more than 2,700 residents and interns, and made significant investments to train nurses, pharmacists, and other health professionals.
• Kaiser Permanente physicians and employees stepped up their volunteer efforts nationwide, contributing their time and talent in countless ways.

Details of these stories and a much broader picture of Kaiser Permanente’s activities can be seen in the 2009 Community Benefit Report. Please download it and learn more. You can find it on the Community Benefit website through this URL: http://www.kp.org/communitybenefit/annualreport2009.

More about Kaiser Permanente’s corporate citizenship efforts can be found throughout the Community Benefit website at www.kp.org/communitybenefit.

Note: To conserve paper and resources, and in keeping with Kaiser Permanente’s commitment to sustainable practices, printed copies of the 2009 Community Benefit Report are limited.