HCA Healthcare Announces $1.84 Million HCA Healthcare Foundation Grant to United Way

NASHVILLE, Tenn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--HCA Healthcare, Inc. (NYSE:HCA), one of the nation’s leading healthcare providers, today announced that the HCA Healthcare Foundation, through its Healthier Tomorrow Fund, will give $1.84 million to Mile High United Way to launch United for Healthy Starts, a national collaboration between four United Ways to help increase access to social, economic and educational support services for families. The effort is led by Mile High United Way in Denver and includes United Way of Metropolitan Dallas, United Way Miami and United Way of Greater Nashville.

“It’s a privilege to help champion the overall health and well-being of families through United for Healthy Starts,” said Joanne Pulles, vice president of community engagement at HCA Healthcare and president of the HCA Healthcare Foundation. “Meaningful community impact can be made when organizations come together to support and learn from one another. We are excited and expect to see a positive influence from this United Way initiative across the country, as we work together to help give communities healthier tomorrows.”

United for Healthy Starts aims to increase access to services to improve social, economic and overall health outcomes for families. Through this new grant, the initiative is designed to help families have strong, healthy starts through home visitation and wrap-around services tailored to the needs of each family supported. By establishing a national, collaborative learning community, United for Healthy Starts will also work to help create new nonprofit partnerships, with the intention of strengthening service delivery and innovation and achieving a scalable impact beyond the grant.

"We are thrilled to continue this longstanding collaboration between two historic anchor institutions committed to improving the lives of families – HCA Healthcare and United Way,” said Christine Benero, Mile High United Way president and CEO. “Through United for Healthy Starts, HCA Healthcare and the HCA Healthcare Foundation are truly putting a stake in the ground for mothers and young children, especially those facing barriers to healthy outcomes. This important grant in the Denver, Dallas, Nashville and Miami communities will help our work to develop new innovations in home visitation and support, and we hope the learnings will allow us to bring this model to more communities in the future.”

HCA Healthcare and the HCA Healthcare Foundation have a long history of working with and supporting United Way. In 1981, HCA Healthcare co-founder Dr. Thomas Frist Jr. co-founded the first chapter of the Alexis de Tocqueville Society in Nashville, Tennessee and later received its Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012. Over the last 30 years, HCA Healthcare and the HCA Healthcare Foundation have given more than $17 million in support of United Way’s work to help improve communities nationwide.

The HCA Healthcare Foundation’s Healthier Tomorrow Fund supports evidence-informed programs that address high-priority needs and advance community health by supporting efforts to pilot, replicate and scale meaningful, measurable initiatives in communities where HCA Healthcare has a presence. Since its inception, the fund has committed more than $17 million in grants to nonprofits across the country.

About HCA Healthcare Foundation

The mission of the HCA Healthcare Foundation is to promote health and well-being and strive to make a positive impact in all the communities HCA Healthcare serves. We accomplish this mission by providing leadership, service and financial support to effective non-profit organizations working individually and collectively.

About HCA Healthcare

Nashville-based HCA Healthcare is one of the nation’s leading providers of healthcare services comprising 190 hospitals and approximately 2,400 ambulatory sites of care, including surgery centers, freestanding ERs, urgent care centers, and physician clinics, in 20 states and the United Kingdom. With its founding in 1968, HCA Healthcare created a new model for hospital care in the United States, using combined resources to strengthen hospitals, deliver patient-focused care and improve the practice of medicine. HCA Healthcare has conducted a number of clinical studies, including one that demonstrated that full-term delivery is healthier than early elective delivery of babies and another that identified a clinical protocol that can reduce bloodstream infections in ICU patients by 44%. HCA Healthcare is a learning health system that uses its approximately 44 million annual patient encounters to advance science, improve patient care and save lives.

All references to “Company,” “HCA” and “HCA Healthcare” as used throughout this document refer to HCA Healthcare, Inc. and its affiliates.