UCare Foundation

Creating healthy communities and improving lives

Since 1998, the UCare Foundation has improved the lives of UCare members and their communities through grants that address urgent community health needs. We focus grant-making on initiatives that improve the health of underserved individuals — including seniors, people with disabilities, children and families across Minnesota. The UCare Foundation funds high-impact services, education, community outreach and research addressing health equity, social drivers and access barriers.

Championing the UCare mission

The UCare Foundation directly supports the UCare mission to improve the health of our members through innovative services and partnerships across communities. Grant-seeking organizations should consider if their mission and activities match the UCare Foundation’s mission and guidelines.

2023 funding priorities

Mental health

• Projects that expand access to mental health and substance use disorder care in Minnesota, focusing on prevention, crisis response, intervention and treatment, and recovery services and supports
• Advance health equity across the mental health and substance use disorder care system by targeting the needs of the most vulnerable communities

Quality initiatives

• Culturally and linguistically appropriate projects that target improving chronic conditions including, but not limited to, diabetes, asthma, kidney disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder (COPD), congestive heart failure and hypertension
• Projects focusing on groups with higher disease prevalence, poorer outcomes or experiencing barriers to care. Examples of groups include people with disabilities, low-income communities, communities of color and recent immigrants

Preventive health

• Programs to encourage and facilitate well-child visits and target children under age two, older teens, Asian communities and communities outside the 7‑county metro area
• Programs to improve routine dental care targeting Native American and Asian communities
• Programs that promote healthy pregnancy and postpartum transition with an emphasis on earlier identification of pregnancy
• Doula services or promotion of Doula job certification in rural communities
• Emergency department reduction programs in non-metro, moderately sized urban centers, e.g., Duluth, Rochester and Mankato
• Support for healthy lifestyles including, but not limited to addressing obesity and tobacco use

Health equity

• Programs to support clinical-community partnerships and multi-sector collaboratives in the design and implementation of solutions aimed at ensuring every Minnesotan can live a healthy life
• Projects should address areas of safe and supportive housing, employment security, accessibility for increasing physical activity in disinvested areas or access to nutritious food
• Projects must focus predominately on solutions to remove and/or minimize structural and social barriers* to health equity

*Structural barriers are the root causes of health disparities, which include structural racism, governing processes and economic/social policies that affect income, working conditions, housing and education, among others. Social barriers to health equity are the underlying community-wide social, economic and physical conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work, worship and age.