In the Community
July 27, 2011
Kaiser Permanente’s 2010 Community Benefit Annual Report Celebrates Our Commitment to Communities
The report shares details about Kaiser Permanente’s $1.8 billion investment in 2010 in the communities we serve
This year’s Community Benefit Annual Report entitled “Full Speed Ahead: Advancing the greater good through our vision of total health,” celebrates Kaiser Permanente’s comprehensive approach to health and wellness through its fostering and support of sustainable, equitable, thriving communities.
Recognizing the challenges and opportunities of 2010 — a year of full of highs and lows as the nation dealt with the promises of health care reform and persistent economic uncertainty — Kaiser Permanente again stepped up its support. We invested a total of $1.8 billion in our communities, a seven percent increase over 2009. Our grantmaking alone totaled nearly $90 million. Those grants were made to more than 2,500 organizations in our communities nationwide.
Kaiser Permanente worked in 2010 to continue furthering three important goals: Healthy people. Healthy environments. New health knowledge.
Here are a few highlights from the year:
- To give more people better access to health care, we significantly expanded the reach of our care and coverage programs, impacting more than 510,000 low-income children and adults by year end, up from 471,000 in 2009. We expanded our Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program membership by more than 45,000 to 405,000, and provided charity care to more than 121,000 individuals through our Medical Financial Assistance Program (up more than 25 percent over 2009).
- In order to extend care to underserved communities, we provided nearly $40 million in core funding of our safety net partners.
- We invested more than $20.5 million in Community Health Initiatives and related programs that make direct impacts in our communities.
- As nearly one in five Americans struggled to afford enough food for themselves and their families, we gave $2 million in Health Eating in Hard Times grants to make healthy offerings more accessible through food distribution programs.
- To create a healthier environment, we adopted industry-leading strategies and aggressive annual targets to reduce harmful environmental impacts in our communities through hazardous chemical and waste reduction, implementation of on-site renewable energy systems, and the purchase of sustainable food products.
- To develop and share new health knowledge, our researchers conducted more than 3,800 research and evaluation studies and published more than 900 journal articles, a 16% increase in research and new knowledge sharing from 2009.
- We invested more than $77 million to educate health care professionals serving our communities.
- Kaiser Permanente physicians and employees stepped up their volunteer efforts nationwide; more than 6,000 of them came together to perform community service on the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 2010.
Details of these stories and a much broader picture of Kaiser Permanente’s activities can be seen on the 2010 Community Benefit Annual Report website www.kp.org/communitybenefit/annualreport
More about Kaiser Permanente’s community investment 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 2010 Community Benefit Report are limited.
