New York City
Improving Health Stability for New Yorkers with Complex Health and Social Needs
Improving Health Stability for New Yorkers with Complex Health and Social Needs
Helmsley invests in approaches that improve health stability for New York City’s populations who are most critically underserved—New Yorkers living with both physical or behavioral health conditions, and social needs such as homelessness. We support efforts that advance healthcare delivery and access for these high-needs patients, acknowledging compounding root causes such as adverse childhood experiences, the impacts of health and racial inequity, and intergenerational poverty.
We work closely with partners in all five boroughs, from nonprofits to local government agencies to community leaders to impact change.
Rooted in a commitment to systems change, our grantmaking is geared towards innovation and lifting roadblocks standing between vulnerable people and the path to a healthier life.
Access to quality healthcare is hindered by issues like housing instability, food insecurity and acute mental health conditions. We confront this challenge with a sharp focus on access to stable housing, a critical foundation that enables New Yorkers to receive the care and support that they need. We champion health-supported housing and other efforts that offer patient-centered, holistic, and quality care.
We create and fund coalitions that bring experts, policymakers, and practitioners together to collaborate on short-term and long-term solutions for complicated, systems-wide challenges that take years to solve. Our approach spans from planning and piloting innovative ideas, to scaling models that have shown promise, to improving the systems designed to handle care delivery.
We have created and funded three collaboratives bringing stakeholders together to change what no one entity could do alone: the New York City Food Assistance Collaborative (2015) to transform the emergency food system, the Collaborative for Homeless Healthcare (2019) to improve access to quality care for New Yorkers experiencing homelessness, and in 2024, the Collaborative on Housing for Health to increase the access, scalability and sustainability of successful housing for health efforts in NYC.
We support greater access to behavioral health services in under-resourced areas, as well as training and education to better integrate mental healthcare into social services and other care settings for New Yorkers with complex health and social needs.
We take a holistic approach in cultivating an ecosystem of supports that improve health stability, and we recognize the physical and mental health benefits of green spaces. We support organizations focused on enhancing and creating more accessible, health-activated green space in underserved areas across the five boroughs.
October 30, 2024
April 15, 2024
January 24, 2024
Crain’s New York Business recently featured our Housing for Health initiative in their Health Plus newsletter. This new initiative aims to address the homelessness crisis in innovative ways, supporting organizations that reduce barriers to permanent housing and health. With $17.6M already granted across six programs, Housing for Health will make up 60% of our New York City Program grantmaking. We hope to…
January 16, 2024
Today the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust announces a major initiative to clear the longstanding hurdles standing between health stability, safe housing, and a population of people who are critically underserved: New Yorkers with complex health and social needs who are experiencing homelessness.
May 23, 2023
The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust announced a $2 million, three-year grant for the Arnhold Institute for Global Health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai to work with NYC Health + Hospitals/Elmhurst and Queens to expand a community-based doula program. The program will focus on providing doula care to pregnant people experiencing housing insecurity…
March 3, 2023
In the summer of 2020, the Helmsley-funded Collaborative for Homeless Healthcare partnered with Montefiore Medical Center to launch the New York City Homeless Healthcare Fellowship, a first-of-its-kind program designed to improve…
July 26, 2022
The Helmsley Charitable Trust announced a $3.9 million grant to NYC Health + Hospitals to launch and integrate a new tele-behavioral health service into its virtual urgent care platform, ExpressCare…
July 14, 2020
The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust today announced more than $6.5 million in grants to help improve the health of New Yorkers by expanding access to green spaces across New York City. Grants to the City Parks Foundation, GrowNYC, the Natural Areas Conservancy, and The Nature Conservancy will support greenway planning, tree health, and enhancements to under-resourced…
