UPPER NYACK, NY (August 8, 2019) – The Global Healthy Living Foundation (GHLF) and George Washington University’s Institute for Corporate Responsibility today announced a partnership to expand the role of impact investing to improve health. Impact investing refers to investments made by companies, organizations, and funds with the intention to generate a measurable, beneficial social or environmental impact alongside a financial return. The full role that impact investing could play in improving global health is vast and has yet to be discovered.
John Forrer, director of the GW Institute for Corporate Responsibility (ICR), said, “impact investors are looking for opportunities to meet expectations for a robust financial return-on-investment and profound results regarding Environmental Social and Governance issues. Happily, there is enormous potential to develop business opportunities that will improve health care outcomes while also benefitting investors’ bottom line. At ICR, we don’t believe there is a conflict when successful investing intersects with making the world a better place. We’re excited about this partnership whose goal is to design social innovations in the healthcare field that will expand access to, and enhance the quality of, health care at a lower cost and a lower risk—in short, more value-for-money.”
GHLF, a patient-centered non-profit organization whose mission is to improve the quality of life for people with chronic illness and a pioneering leader in social networking, and its patient-reported outcomes registry, ArthritisPower®, will be leveraging its outreach to millions of patients with George Washington University’s established presence in corporate responsibility and impact investing in order to jointly identify the role of non-traditional investors to improve health outcomes.
“Improving individual patient outcomes and investing in a health community requires the efforts of government, the private sector, and philanthropy. This partnership will provide a framework to aligning new sources of capital to returns that benefit patients and society,” said GHLF co-founder and president, Seth Ginsberg.
“For example, although we are a leader in the arthritis community, we never ask individuals to donate money,” Ginsberg adds. “Patients with chronic disease have enough financial burdens meeting their insurance copays, deductibles and premiums. They need to know that we and our funders from government, industry, and other foundations, are working for them not the other way around. For example, public fundraising expenses can take up 80 percent of the money raised through individual donations. In these cases, patients are paying the charity. We think the social impact of this is negative,” Ginsberg says.
“On the other hand,” Louis Tharp, executive director of GHLF, says, “not asking sick people for money is critical, but fully funding research, data infrastructure, analytics and education is critical, too. In order to successfully raise funds necessary to reach this dual objective we have to measure success with verified assessment tools and prove worth.”
Initially, GHLF and GWU’s Institute for Corporate Responsibility will convene a working group of stakeholders, including leaders from the private sector, philanthropy, and non-profit organizations to define a global framework for healthcare impact investing and resources for funders and grantees.
About Institute for Corporate Responsibility
The ICR is devoted to the development and dissemination of scholarship, including research and teaching focused on corporate responsibility. It serves as a vehicle for continuing education, curriculum development, conferences and seminars, which address the needs of the School of Business, the George Washington University, and the greater Washington, D.C. community. The ICR serves as a leading resource to the business community by partnering with business associations as well as the policy offices of federal agencies, Congress, local and regional governments, non-governmental organizations, and international organizations. By developing this university-business-government partnership across the United States and throughout the world, the ICR creates and disseminates knowledge, builds scholarly capacity for our faculty and students, and further develops GW’s global presence.
About Global Healthy Living Foundation
The Global Healthy Living Foundation is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization whose mission is to improve the quality of life for people living with chronic illnesses (such as arthritis, osteoporosis, migraine, psoriasis, and cardiovascular disease) by advocating for improved access to health care at the community, state, and federal levels, and amplifying education and awareness efforts within its social media framework. GHLF is also a staunch advocate for vaccines. The Global Healthy Living Foundation is the parent organization of CreakyJoints®, the digital arthritis community for millions of arthritis patients and caregivers worldwide who seek education, support, activism, and patient-centered research through ArthritisPower®, the first-ever patient-centered research registry for joint, bone, and inflammatory skin conditions. Visit GHLF.org for more information.
