Steve Patterson Award for Excellence in Sports Philanthropy
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| Founded | 1972 |
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| Founder | Robert Wood Johnson II |
| Focus | Healthcare reform, quality of care, childhood obesity, human capital, vulnerable populations, public health, health coverage |
| Location | |
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Area served
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Health and health care |
| Method | Grantmaking and social change |
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Key people
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Risa Lavizzo-Mourey |
| Disbursements | ~$400 million annually |
| Endowment | $9.2 billion |
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Employees
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283 |
| Website | www |
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) is the United States' largest philanthropy focused solely on health; it is based in Princeton, New Jersey. The foundation's goal, through the use of grants, is "to improve the health and health care of all Americans." The foundation has $9.2 billion in assets, generating grants approaching $400 million a year.
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation makes grants for a range of health issues, including access to care, childhood obesity, and training for doctors and nurses. Other topics of interest to the foundation include social and economic factors that can impact health, including quality of housing, violence, poverty, and access to fresh food.
Robert Wood Johnson II built the family firm of Johnson & Johnson into the world's largest health products maker. He died in 1968. He established the foundation at his death with 10,204,377 shares of the company's stock.
The foundation is headed by Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, who was named president and CEO in December 2002. Lavizzo-Mourey succeeded Steve Schroeder, the foundation's president between 1990 and 2002. Under Schroeder's leadership, the foundation played a major role in curbing tobacco use in the US, spending $446 million from 1991 to 2003 toward that goal, and it plans to use those experiences to shape its attack on childhood obesity. Since 1995, the number of adult and teenage smokers has declined 12.6 percent and 18 percent, respectively.
These interest areas include:
Childhood Obesity: Backing projects that help reverse the childhood obesity epidemic by 2015 by improving access to affordable, healthy food and providing more opportunities for children to play and exercise in their schools and communities.
In April 2007, the foundation committed $500 million to fighting childhood obesity.
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's grants are focused on driving public policy initiatives and changing community environments. These include programs that encourage supermarkets to return to low-income communities and that improve nutrition, physical activity, and staff wellness in schools nationwide. The foundation partnered with The Food Trust, a non-profit in Philadelphia that helps make fresh, affordable food accessible to the underprivileged and educates children about healthy eating. The Food Trust’s research on childhood obesity led the Philadelphia school system to ban soda vending machines from all of its schools, the strongest measure in the country.
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Wikipedia