Our Mission

Our mission is to advance policy, build partnerships, and strengthen public health to create communities where people can achieve their best possible health.

Our Vision

Our vision is a nation where every person in every community has the opportunity to achieve their best possible health.

Our Focus

Founded in 1998, the de Beaumont Foundation creates and invests in bold solutions that improve the health of communities across the country. We believe that every person should have the opportunity to achieve their best health, regardless of where they live. We focus on improving health at the community level by investing in tools, partnerships, policies, and the public health workforce.

When Americans say “health,” they often mean healthcare or health insurance — not community health. Our nation spends more on healthcare than any other developed country, but we rank below comparable countries in nearly every indicator, including life expectancy, heart disease, obesity, diabetes, lung disease, and alcohol- and drug-related deaths. Healthcare that focuses on individuals after they’ve become sick falls short because it doesn’t address the many social and economic factors that influence health. In comparison to healthcare, public health is underfunded and undervalued, and our goal is to help close that gap by investing in lasting solutions to improve health.

What We Do

  • Policy: We advance policies that improve community health, so that current and future generations can benefit from changes enacted by today’s leaders.
  • Partnerships: We build partnerships, often among unlikely allies, so that leaders can achieve the shared goal of creating healthier communities.
  • People: We create practical solutions that strengthen the public health system and workforce, so that professionals are equipped to make their communities healthier.

Core Beliefs

  • Every person in every community should have the opportunity to obtain their best possible health.
  • Health is more than healthcare. We approach our work with the knowledge that many factors influence health.
  • Policy is one of the most powerful and effective tools to achieve lasting change and create optimal conditions for health.
  • Local approaches and practical solutions are vital to achieving broad, lasting change.
  • To make communities healthier, we need strong state and local health departments and a thriving public health workforce.

Our Philanthropy

The Foundation is not a traditional grant-making organization, and we do not accept unsolicited grant proposals. We have a focused portfolio of initiatives designed to build healthier communities where people have the opportunity to achieve their best possible health.

  • We invest in areas where our assets will have the greatest influence and impact.
  • We are more than a funder. We are hands-on, we create programs, and we stay involved with our partners and initiatives.
  • We use research and engage stakeholders to assess gaps, then apply practical tools to address unmet needs.
  • We use entrepreneurial problem-solving to design solutions and test them for viability, improving the body of practical evidence for the public health field.
  • We invest in measurable, replicable, scalable projects that have the potential for systemic impact.
  • Our projects integrate into existing systems to improve the health of communities.

The Vose River Charitable Fund is an independent public charity that collaborates with the de Beaumont Foundation and serves as a fiscal agent for several programs, including The BUILD Health Challenge® and CityHealth.