Foundations Respond to Health Equity Backlash
In this episode of Centering Health Equity, we were joined by Dr. Giridhar Mallya of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Dr. Karen McNeil-Miller of the Colorado Health Foundation to explore how philanthropy is responding to federal funding cuts, growing resistance to health equity initiatives, and the resulting challenges facing public health and community-based organizations. The conversation examines the real-world consequences of reduced funding, including lost research data, diminished healthcare access, and threats to trusted community programs, while highlighting how foundations, nonprofits, and legal advocates are sustaining essential services through collaboration, strategic funding, legal support, and narrative change.
Listen Now
About Our Guests
Dr. Karen McNeil-Miller
Karen McNeil-Miller describes social and human impact as the center of her life’s work. As the president and CEO of The Colorado Health Foundation, Karen helps guide the Foundation to determine the most impactful investment of human, fi nancial and infl uence capital on behalf of the Coloradans who need it the most. At the Foundation since September 2015, Karen describes its mission as a key driving force in her life. She says, “I chose this important fi eld of work to be on the ground in Colorado communities and to get closer to those in need and assist in every way I could.” Karen joined the Foundation after serving for more than 10 years as the president of the Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust, one of North Carolina’s largest private foundations. Under her leadership, the Trust evolved into a strategic, impact-driven foundation with a national presence on issues ranging from rural health to access to care. Before joining the Trust, Karen spent 16 years with the Center for Creative Leadership, an international leadership development and research nonprofi t organization headquartered in Greensboro, North Carolina. During her tenure, Karen developed expertise in individual and organizational leadership development, succession planning, strategic thinking, team building, diversity, executive coaching and leading change and transitions.
Karen lives each day knowing that good health impacts every element of our lives. A former special education teacher and head of the Piedmont School in North Carolina, Karen is active within the nonprofi t community and national and regional philanthropic and rural health organizations. She serves on the boards of: Colorado Community College System; Alliance for a Healthier Generation; and M.D. Anderson Leadership Academy. At home, Karen cultivates a balanced, healthy life that includes her husband and two children, a minor shoe obsession and – on a beautiful Colorado day – a good book and a glass of wine outside on her deck.
More About Dr. McNeil-Miller
Dr. Giridhar Mallya
Giridhar Mallya, MD, MSHP, is a public health physician whose career spans government, philanthropy, and academia. His work leverages the power of public policy and community health interventions to shape the political, social, and economic determinants of health.
He currently serves as Senior Policy Officer for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation where he leads a national initiative to defend racial equity, diversity, and inclusion in health and other sectors.
Dr. Mallya was previously Director of Policy and Planning for the Philadelphia Department of Public Health. He is a board-certified family physician and adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
More About Dr. Mallya
