Braiding and blending funds to promote social determinants of health

On May 1, 2019, The Brookings Institution’s Braiding and Blending Working Group hosted an event on how to establish more flexible funding strategies to improve community health and economic mobility. The event began with an introduction to the topic of “braiding and blending” funds from different sources and the challenges of achieving such flexible funding. A panel then deepened the conversation by providing examples and lessons from governments and organizations in the field. A second panel discussion assessed policy steps that could be taken to facilitate a better environment for addressing the challenges and opportunities associated with braiding and blending funds.

This public event and The Brookings Institution’s Braiding and Blending Working Group are part of an ongoing project at Brookings focusing on encouraging cross-sector collaboration to improve community health and economic mobility. The purpose of the Braiding and Blending Working Group is to explore flexible funding strategies and ways in which the policy environment can be modified to achieve better health and social outcomes. As part of this project, the working group recently collaborated with the Urban Institute’s Pay for Success Initiative (PFSI) to release a blog series on Uniting funding streams for health and social innovation. You can learn more about the Brookings Health-Economic Mobility project here: https://www.brookings.edu/series/building-healthy-neighborhoods/.