The Connection Between Health and Wealth

Generally speaking, the more established you are, the healthier you are.  Therefore, asset building and socioeconomic status are strongly linked to health outcomes.  Increased access to goods and services like healthy food and healthcare will improve health outcomes in lower income communities and communities of color.[1]

These investments provide lower-income communities the opportunity to participate in developing assets and wealth building, which in turn lead to decreasing health disparities and poor health outcomes within these communities.

[1] MG Marmot, MJ Shipley and G Rose, (1984) Inequalities in death-specific explanations of a general pattern? Lancet; 1(8384):1003-6.

Greenlining's Work

The Greenlining Institute has established itself as a strong advocate for developing public/private partnerships that provide win-win opportunities for the private sector and low-income and/or communities of color.  We work to help public and private stakeholders fulfill the needs of their constituencies by upholding the values of supplier diversity, leadership diversity, philanthropy, and accountability.  We believe that in order for corporations to responsibly serve their constituents, they must practice all of these.

Historically Greenlining has been successful in increasing corporate social responsibility within financial institutions, the emerging green economy, telecommunications / technology and regulated utilities through the development of major public interest provisions even where current law would not technically apply.  In light of the current budget crisis in California, and the uncertainty of healthcare reform, we see an opportunity to engage the healthcare industry as part of the solution, similar to our efforts with financial institutions and other industries.

We aim to:

• Increase supplier diversity practices of health companies;
• Increase diversity of health company leadership and staff;
• Increase corporate philanthropy among health companies;
• Promote healthcare reform that addresses the needs of underserved and low income communities; and
• Streamline the regulatory processes overseeing the pharmaceutical and biotech industry to maximize their power to promote corporate social responsibility.

We do this by:

• Conduct research on current corporate social responsibility standards within the industry;
• Conduct research on expanding the regulatory powers of healthcare regulatory agencies to include overseeing corporate social responsibility;
• Engage the healthcare industry in discussions on corporate social responsibility standards; and
• Develop public and private organizational relationships to improve public health.