Promoting Wellness, Health and 
Access to High-Quality Health Care

First Grant Made to UK Charity

Aetna and the Aetna Foundation jointly made their first grant in the United Kingdom. The King's Fund, one of the most prominent health policy organizations in the UK and an advisor to the National Health Service, will analyze the most effective models in England of coordinated care for patients with complex, chronic diseases. The results of the study have the potential to impact health care improvements in the United States as well as in the UK. With health care for patients with chronic conditions accounting for the largest share of health care spending, efforts to better coordinate and integrate care for this population is increasingly seen as a key lever to overall improvements to population health, patient outcomes and moderation of costs.

New Scholars Named

The Aetna Foundation/NMF Healthcare Leadership Program has named three additional medical student-leaders to receive $5,000 scholarships. Congratulations to Carmen E. Cancino, Cassandra M. List and Shamsideen O. Musa.

Created in 2011 to help address the severe national shortage of physician-leaders who are committed to the health of underserved communities, the program provides scholarships to second- and third-year medical students from underrepresented minority groups with a commitment to serve medically underserved communities. The first three recipients were announced in June; an additional four will be named on April 17, 2012 in New York at the final gala celebrating National Medical Fellowships' 65^th anniversary.

Aetna Foundation Website Made Easier

The Aetna Foundation website has undergone a redesign to make the site easier to navigate and key information simpler to find. The home page's top-line navigational bar now sports two new tabs – Recent Grants and News. The new Recent Grants section features videos and short descriptions of dozens of national and regional grants from 2011 and 2010 in our three focus areas: Obesity, Racial and Ethnic Health Care Equity and Integrated Health Care.

Also new is our Aetna Foundation Scholars Programs. Here you'll find information about our programs to increase the number of doctors and other health care professionals from underrepresented minorities, including the AcademyHealth/Aetna Foundation Minority Scholars Program, the Aetna Foundation/NMF Healthcare Leadership Program, the National Academy Foundation and the Four Directions Summer Research Program.

Another new section, Program Impact, showcases publications and research results from our grant recipients on the work we funded.

Rounding out the redesign are new branding images for the three primary focus areas.

Data Challenge Deadline Nears

The Aetna Foundation Data Challenge, sponsored in conjunction with Health 2.0, continues to draw software programmers interested in vying for the $25,000 top prize. To date,16 programming teams have registered to submit an interactive browser application designed to make key federal data about obesity and related data sets more accessible and usable. The deadline to submit the applications for judging is December 15.The winners will be announced in 2012.

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Meet the Scholars

Carmen E. Cancino, a third-year medical student from the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Chicago who was a recipient of a Albert Schweitzer Fellowship Award and who created a Young Doctors Club for middle school students in a predominantly African-American and low-income neighborhood.

Cassandra M. List, a second-year medical student from the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Chicago who serves as co-president of the school's chapter of the Latino Medical Student Association and as a Spanish interpreter in community health clinics.

Shamsideen O. Musa, a third-year medical student from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine who developed a weekend science curriculum taught by Pritzker medical students to urban teenagers interested in science and medicine and who also founded a student program, Big Sibs-Little Sibs, in which medical students from minority backgrounds mentor minority undergraduates interested in medicine.