In Good Health

Learning and evaluation have always been central to our practice at The Colorado Health Foundation, because we believe they have the potential to help us be smarter about our work so we can create greater impact at the intersection of health and equity.

Learning and evaluation help us hold ourselves accountable to the communities we exist to serve – always asking the questions of whether we’re living into our values, whether the assumptions we have hold true, and whether we’re helping communities move the needle on issues of health that are important to them.

Our President and CEO, Karen McNeil-Miller, describes the role of our Learning and Evaluation Department as holding a mirror up to the Foundation – offering an

This blog post was originally published on Sept. 9, 2020 on Pulse: The Colorado Health Foundation Poll website. 

When I joined The Colorado Health Foundation in November 2018, I started with three items on my “to do” list:

1. Figure out how to use public opinion research to better understand Coloradans.
2. Do that research in ways that are unbiased and methodologically rigorous.
3. Share what we learn openly and often to advance health equity.

It was a daunting list.

Fast forward almost two years, and here we are – releasing the first in an annual series of statewide polls of more than 2,000 Coloradans. Leading up to this, we’ve conducted focus groups, messaging analyses and media audits; but Pulse: The Colorado

As we celebrate Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s life, we are compelled to remember that we must continue working toward progress for and with people who have historically lacked power and privilege – even and especially in perplexing times like these. 

Serving on the United States Supreme Court for more than 27 years – only the second woman to serve – her unyielding commitment to justice leaves a lasting legacy as a trailblazer for equity and a model for what’s possible.
Born and raised in a Jewish household in Brooklyn, New York, “the notorious RBG” graduated from Cornell University and Columbia Law School, only to be turned away from one job opportunity after the other, simply because she was

Racism has everything to do with health, and everything to do with our work at the Foundation. We said this following George Floyd’s death earlier this summer, and today, we give the same resounding response to the recent racially-driven violence in Kenosha, Wisconsin – because we must keep bending the arc toward justice.

Last Sunday, in Kenosha, a police officer shot a Black father seven times in his back at close-range, in front of his three young children. His name is Jacob Blake, and he remains in critical condition. A few days into nightly protests following this deliberate use of excessive force, an armed, White civilian fired into the crowd, killing two protestors and injuring one. He was arrested