PRESS RELEASE: Joint Center Receives $3.6 Million Grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation

For Immediate Release

For more information contact:
Betty Anne Williams, 202-789-3505
bawilliams@jointcenter.org

Joint Center Receives $3.6 Million Grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation

WASHINGTON, DC -- The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a Washington-based research and policy institution that focuses on the concerns of African Americans and other people of color, has received a three-year, $3.6 million grant to fund its economic research and the work of its Health Policy Institute (HPI).

The funding comes from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation of Battle Creek, MI.

The grant will enable the Joint Center to continue HPI's work with regard to research and policy development on health inequities, particularly those related to higher infant mortality, higher rates of disease and disability, and shortened life expectancy.

Those inequities added more than $50 billion a year in direct U.S. health care costs over a four-year period, according to a study released by HPI last fall, which found that more than 30 percent of direct medical expenditures for African Americans, Asian Americans and Hispanics were excess costs linked to health inequalities. The study also estimated that the indirect costs of racial inequalities associated with illness and premature death amounted to more than a trillion dollars over 2006-2009.

"The health inequities experienced by minority Americans have a major impact across our society," said Ralph B. Everett, the Joint Center's President and CEO. "They hamper our workforce readiness and competitiveness as a nation, and they frustrate our ability to contain health care costs and improve overall health care quality. This grant will enable the Joint Center to continue our groundbreaking research and explore policy options that will drive solutions to this immense problem."

Over the three year grant period, HPI intends to serve as an anchor institution for a wider effort among national and local partners to use its research and policy development activities in the quest for a more equitable health system and fairer health outcomes...