Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Foundation
Well-hatted HPHC volunteers cheffing at the McInnis House, an inpatient medical respite care facility of Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program.
On a sultry day last August, an intrepid group of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care volunteers served a bountiful summer barbeque of salad, cheeseburgers and Klondike bars to 90 men and women who were recuperating at McInnis House, an inpatient medical respite care facility in Jamaica Plain for patients of Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program (BHCHP).
This day of service is one of many ways in which Harvard Pilgrim Health Care works with a key non-profit partner. The relationship started over 5 years ago with BHCHP Board service through our Chief Operating Officer and has continued to flourish over time in many other ways.
Harvard Pilgrim and its Foundation share a mission: to promote health and prevent disease. Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program’s mission is to provide and ensure access to quality health care for Boston's homeless men, women and children. Together, our organizations care about and work toward improving the health of our most vulnerable.
Volunteering and giving are the two main strategies that describe Harvard Pilgrim's relationship with Boston Health Care for the Homeless. HPHC employees volunteer at BHCHP and the organization is a recipient of our annual employee fundraising campaign. In 2006, employees donated more than $21,000 and in 2007, we doubled our employee giving to BHCHP to $42,000.
Departments within Harvard Pilgrim have hosted charitable fundraisers at their own discretion and in 2007 Harvard Pilgrim's Care Management Department collected 165 pairs of flip flops and 55 packages of women's underwear and 80 packages of men's underwear for the patients.
Finally, Harvard Pilgrim's Chief Operating Officer, Bruce Bullen, has been on the BHCHP Board of Directors for many years. Board membership always means financial assistance to the organization as well as volunteer service. In 2006, Bullen began co-chairing a major capital campaign for BHCHP helping to raise $36.3 out of a $42 million goal thus far for a new building, which will provide a multi-discipline service center for the homeless in Boston. Harvard Pilgrim contributed $150,000 towards the campaign, the largest charitable grant from our organization in recent history. The new building will help BHCHP unite an expanded medical respite care unit, primary care, dental and mental health care and a pharmacy under one roof. For example, mental health and health care services can simultaneously be dispensed more easily to BHCHP patients in one location.
These cumulative strategies have helped provide BHCHP with the funding and strategic vision necessary to survive in a demanding and competitive fiscal environment. And Harvard Pilgrim employees have enjoyed volunteering and giving to this critical organization at each and every opportunity.
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