The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Reports on Its Grant-Making Priorities
By M.J. Prest
Senior Editor, Solutions
March 23, 2006 | Read Time: 1 minute
To Improve Health and Health Care, Volume IX
edited by Stephen L. Isaacs and James R. Knickman
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, in Princeton, N.J., makes grants to health-policy groups in the hopes of fostering social change that will lead to new laws that direct more federal money to health organizations. Edited by Stephen L. Isaacs, president of Health Policy Associates, in San Francisco, and James R. Knickman, vice president for research and evaluation at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, this book examines some of the programs that the foundation supports.
Among the projects featured are those that help drug addicts, the elderly, and uninsured people. The foundation’s programs to prevent drug use have undergone a series of phases, focusing on alcoholism in the early 1980s and expanding to include illicit drug and tobacco abuse later in the decade.
In 1988, the foundation began allocating what eventually totaled $88-million for its Fighting Back program to support small, local organizations that reduce the demand for illegal drugs in their communities. By 1991, the federal government had followed suit, giving $300-million to more than 250 similar groups nationwide.
Publisher: Jossey-Bass, 989 Market Street, San Francisco, Calif. 94103; (800) 956-7739; fax (317) 572-4002; http://www.josseybass.com; 267 pages; $25; ISBN 0-7879-8368-3.
