Healthcare Anchor Network Movement Gains Momentum

Jan. 5, 2022

65-member network becomes nonprofit organization as health systems embrace their roles as catalysts for equity by leveraging their everyday operations, including hiring, purchasing, and investment

David Raths

A September 2021 Healthcare Innovation article quoted Darlene Hightower, J.D., vice president for community health equity at Rush University Medical Center, about the health center’s “anchor mission” role in its Chicago community. Rush is one member of a network of anchor health systems across the country that has just become an independent nonprofit organization.

Over the last five years, the Healthcare Anchor Network (HAN) has grown in scale and impact. It now includes more than 65 members with more than 1,000 hospitals that employ more than 2 million people, purchase over $75 billion annually, and have over $150 billion in invested assets. These health systems embrace their roles as catalysts for health, economic, and racial equity by leveraging their everyday operations, including hiring, purchasing, and investment for equitable, local economic impact and to build community wealth.

Founding members included Advocate Aurora Health, CommonSpirit Health, Henry Ford Health System, Kaiser Permanente, ProMedica, Providence St. Joseph Health, Rush University Medical Center, RWJBarnabas Health, Trinity Health, and UMass Memorial Health Care.

“There's a continuum of health equity work and anchor mission is part of it,” Rush’s Hightower explained in a talk hosted by the Social Interventions Research and Evaluation Network (SIREN) based at the University of California San Francisco. “What ties it to the social determinants of health is the economic piece, like people having high-quality jobs and support for small business.”

HAN has launched several collective initiatives, including a Place-Based Investment Commitment and Impact Purchasing Commitment.

Members signing the Place-based Investment Commitment commit to redirecting a portion of their investable assets toward impact investments that are place-based and address community conditions that create racial, economic and environmental disparities. Signatories pledge to allocate at least 1 percent or $50 million (whichever is less) of long-term reserves or unrestricted investment fund or pool for place-based impact investments to be deployed within five years.

Twelve HAN member health systems have signed the “Impact Purchasing Commitment” (IPC) to build healthy, equitable, and climate-resilient local economies through what and how they spend their dollars. The IPC commitment includes increasing spending with Minority and Women Owned Business Enterprises (MWBEs) as well as local and employee-owned, cooperatively owned and/or nonprofit-owned enterprises, by at least $1 billion collectively over five years.

“As a new organization, we look forward to deepening our network activities and sector impact to reach a critical mass of health systems adopting the anchor mission as an institutional priority to improve community health and well-being,” said David Zuckerman, Healthcare Anchor Network’s president, in a statement. “HAN is also aiming to expand our impact and reach through partnerships and affiliate memberships and advisory support to anchor collaboratives,” added Zuckerman.

CommonSpirit Health, Intermountain Healthcare, Kaiser Permanente, ProMedica, SSM Health, and Trinity Health provided seed funding to support the new organization.