Annual Responsive Grant Programs
The Maine Health Access Foundation offers two responsive grant programs: Systems Improvement and Innovation Grants (SIIRG) and Community Responsive Grants (CRG). These programs are offered annually and provide project-based funding for initiatives that are responsive to needs identified by people in communities across the state.
Systems Improvement & Innovation Responsive Grants Program
Staff Lead: Charles Dwyer, Senior Program Officer
The Systems Improvement and Innovation Responsive Grants (SIIRG) program focuses on creating change that is responsive to community-identified health needs at the system and organizational levels, with a major emphasis on ensuring that the community of focus has a meaningful and ongoing voice in shaping improvements and innovations that address their barriers to health equity.
The SIIRG program actively recognizes that some community health services and access to care needs require action by systems and organizations – “the providers” of care. Grants made through this program focus on improving health and access to care in four strategic priority areas: rural health, aging/older adults, behavioral health, and maternal and child health.
Community Responsive Grants Program
Staff Lead: Frank Martinez Nocito, Senior Program Officer
The Community Responsive Grants (CRG) program focuses on health equity and is based in recognition that those closest to a given problem often have the best ideas about potential solutions.
CRG projects focus on changing policies, practices, and perceptions that create barriers to health care and good health and respond to community needs, address emerging opportunities, test innovative approaches or new ideas, or implement programs informed by the experiences of communities on how to address barriers to achieving health equity.
Projects funded through this program have leadership from the communities facing inequities in health access or outcomes and community members play a central role in developing and implementing the solutions proposed.