The Blue & You Foundation for a Healtheir Arkansas, the charitable organization established by Arkansas Blue Cross and Blue Shield, announced that it's awarding 47 grants totaling $3.4 million to health projects across the state next year.
Grant recipients and their projects include:
- American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, Little Rock ($50,000) – to provide a suicide prevention program in five school districts in Baxter, Crawford and Garland counties.
- Arch Ford Educational Service Cooperative, Plumerville ($79,714.69) – to create a model agricultural program in schools in Cleburne, Conway, Faulkner, Perry, Pope, Pulaski, Van Buren and Yell counties. The funds will allow the Coop to provide the schools materials to create gardens, greenhouses, animal husbandry materials and equipment to allow them to teach healthy food and lifestyle choices.
- Arkansas Cancer Coalition, Little Rock ($20,000) – to allow them to continue to provide mobile cancer screenings via the Arkansas Minority Health Commission’s Mobile Health Unit across Arkansas.
- Arkansas Foodbank, Little Rock ($83,794) – to fund a Community Health Worker salary to manage a program called More Than Food — Moving from Transactional to Transformation. The program was created to help people in Phillips, Monroe, Lee and Arkansas counties become food secure long-term.
- Arkansas Hospice Inc., Little Rock ($140,100) – to provide palliative and advanced primary and hospice care using telehealth in 43 Arkansas counties.
- Arkansas Hunger Relief Alliance, Little Rock ($92,363) – to fund a program targeting 25 Alliance partners around Arkansas, providing the people they serve with the skills and education to stretch their food budgets while making healthy choices, as well as connecting them with access to food resources.
- Arkansas Imagination Library, Little Rock ($10,080) – to fund the Books from Birth program. The statewide initiative will bring Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library initiative into the state’s two largest birthing hospitals to promote enrollment and encourage literacy, parental involvement and education starting at birth.
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Arkansas Rural Health Partnership, Lake Village ($150,000) – to provide mental health first aid training to Arkansas first responders and other healthcare workers, enabling them to provide additional resources to children and adults in the state.
Additional grants of up to $2,000 will be available in 2023 through the foundation. Grant applications will be accepted from Jan. 1-Feb. 15. The grants will go to groups looking to fund safety equipment, school health initiatives and efforts and end food insecurity,
“This is another grant opportunity for schools, colleges, universities, nonprofit groups and municipal organizations to receive much-needed funds to help advance their projects and initiatives,” said Rebecca Pittillo, executive director of the Blue & You Foundation.
