How Philanthropy Can Fight Substance Abuse And Promote Mental Health

Health Affairs Aug 30, 2018
This article is deemed a must-read by one or more of our expert collaborators.
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Mental-health-substance-abuse

Giving Compass’ Take:

• Health Affairs discusses a recent report that lays out recommendations for how we can address the addiction and mental health crises in this country through policies and investments.

• The main takeaway is that foundations and funders shouldn’t be afraid to fail. Only through risk-taking and empathy will we come up with sustainable solutions for those who are suffering.

• Here’s a success story for improving mental health care in Virginia.

In 2017, Trust for America’s Health (TFAH) and Well Being Trust embarked on a joint effort to advance policy solutions to the drug, alcohol, and suicide epidemics. The first product of this partnership was a report, Pain in the Nation: The Drug, Alcohol and Suicide Epidemics and the Need for a National Resilience Strategy, funded by Well Being Trust and the RWJF, and published by TFAH.

That report focuses specifically on practice and policy solutions to reduce deaths from drugs, alcohol, and suicide — ranging from expanding the use and availability of rescue drugs, sterile syringes, and diversion programs, to limiting hours and density of alcohol sales, to supporting state suicide prevention plans, to expanding social-emotional learning and mental health services in schools.

The following highlights specific actions mentioned in the report that could be taken to solve some of the problems around substance misuse and mental health.

  1. Investing in prevention and creating more resilient families and communities must be a higher policy priority — especially for foundations.
  2. Foundations can be instrumental in helping their communities create consistent standards for identifying and treating mental health and substance misuse for multiple conditions and across community and clinical delivery settings.
  3. We must make accessing services for mental health and substance misuse conditions easier and make services more affordable for everyone.

To truly move the needle, we must be policy-influencers and advocates. Foundations can harness the power of our endowments through impact investing — using our knowledge of the financial world to ensure that everyone can realize their fullest potential.

Read the full article about fighting substance abuse and promoting mental health by Benjamin F. Miller and Anne De Biasi at Health Affairs.

Learning and benchmarking are key steps towards becoming an impact giver. If you are interested in giving with impact on Advocacy and Policy take a look at these selections from Giving Compass.

  • This article is deemed a must-read by one or more of our expert collaborators.
    Click here for more.
    Public-Planet Partnerships Can Heal Our Earth

    Giving Compass' Take: • Stanford Social Innovation Review discusses a new model for environmental solutions: collaborating with nature in what's called "Public-Planet Partnerships." • The purpose is to generate "win-win" scenarios for both us and our ecosystem, rather than exploiting natural resources for short-term gains. How can those in the sector encourage more PPP action? • Here's how climate leaders are taking cues from nature to inspire optimism. The Public-Planet Partnership (PPP) framework was developed in partnership between 3BL Associates and SoScience to help create new solutions that solve specific challenges linked to the SDGs or to improve existing solutions within an organization. Given the limitations of public-private partnerships — in that they don’t consider the planet as a stakeholder or collaborator — we believed there was a need for eco-inclusive “Public-Planet Partnerships,” and launched the first pilot PPP workshops during the UN COP 22 Climate Conference in Morocco, with the support of Ashoka and the Robert Bosch Stiftung. Comprised of tools, case studies, and links to technical resources, the framework starts with inviting innovators to engage in an ethos dialogue, with the goal of understanding the ethics and values required to guide the rest of the process. This is the basic understanding that we are looking for mutually beneficial, win-win collaborations, rather than exploiting nature’s resources for the primary purpose of human gain. Popular circular economy initiatives embed other species into solutions, but in certain cases, they offer little mutual value to our planetary partners and don’t fully harness their eco-system potential. The Cardboard to Caviar initiative is one example. It focuses on feeding worms composted waste, which are in turn fed to sturgeon fish, which are later killed to harvest caviar, but there is no regenerative or net positive benefit to nature. Read the full article about public-planet partnerships by Mélanie Marcel, Tariq Al-Olaimy, and Leena Al-Olaimy at Stanford Social Innovation Review.

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