Swedish Medical Center announces grant to integrated family community services

Denver, CO – Swedish Medical Center, part of HealthONE, announced that the HCA Healthcare Foundation has awarded a $25,000 grant to Integrated Family Community Services (IFCS) in Englewood to support this organization whose work, since its founding in 1964, is focused on alleviating hunger. The grant is one of many awarded across the country as part of HCA Healthcare Foundation’s new Health Equity Catalyst Grant Program. This year, the grants were given to nonprofits addressing food insecurity and providing access to healthy foods.

“At Swedish, we’re committed to supporting organizations and collaboratives addressing health inequities,” said Ryan Tobin, CEO, Swedish Medical Center. “Colleagues from our Emergency Department consistently volunteer as a team at IFCS, and recently helped support over 300 community children through the IFCS Helping Hands for the Holidays program.”

“Over the years, the population we serve has become much more diverse,” said Todd McPherson, Development Director for IFCS. “Support from the Health Equity Catalyst Grant will enable us to increase training for staff and volunteers around diversity, equity, and inclusion. The grant will also assist IFCS in retaining multiple language speaking staff or translation resources, allowing more outreach to diverse populations that could use support but are unaware of the resources due to language barriers.  IFCS will produce marketing and informational materials in multiple languages.”

Launched in August 2023, the Health Equity Catalyst Grant Program provides one-time operating grants to support organizations and collaboratives addressing health inequities in a defined focus area in order to advance or accelerate efforts to:

• Provide culturally and structurally competent services,
• Advance high-impact health equity programming,
• Support collaborative health equity efforts, and/or
• Address root causes of health inequities.

In addition to these grants, HealthONE hosted their third-annual Healthy Food for Healthier Tomorrows Food & Nutrition Drive to help fight against food insecurity. This fall, HealthONE, including Swedish Medical Center, provided 5,330 meals to Denver-metro community food banks. In total, HCA Healthcare, its colleagues and the HCA Healthcare Foundation provided more than 1 million nutritious meals to community food banks by donating food or making financial contributions to help purchase perishable items such as milk, fruit and vegetables.

The Healthier Tomorrow Fund is a community impact fund focused on addressing high-priority community needs and advancing health equity. Since its launch in 2021, the Healthier Tomorrow Fund has committed more than $18.86 million in communities where HCA Healthcare has a presence and made grants to 79 nonprofit organizations.