Thoughts from the CEO
Dear CARESTAR community:

Earlier this month, we as a country officially recognized and celebrated Juneteenth! What a glorious day to pause, reflect, and remember. 

I appreciated having a day to think about how far we’ve come as a country, how much further we need to go, and to prepare me for what comes next.

For CARESTAR, part of that is continuing on our journey to look at what we need to do to “walk the racial equity talk”. As a funder, we will keep supporting organizations and projects that examine and address racial inequities in emergency and prehospital care (see the grant news below); in fact we have just crossed the $10M mark in funds awarded since we started as a foundation. 

This Juneteenth, we also took the opportunity to look introspectively. I was proud to present CARESTAR’s first ever Racial Equity Action Plan to our board of directors recently, operationalizing our vision for racial equity. They unanimously approved the plan, setting forth a true roadmap for how we will operate as an anti-racist organization, from enacting policies around board and staff diversity, to creating an equitable pay scale, to moving our assets into impact investing.

Our work clearly does not end here; yet a good place to be as we continue to reach out to more changemakers in emergency and prehospital care with hope, passion, and determination.


In community and partnership,
Tanir
CARESTAR Announces Two New Grant Partners
CARESTAR is excited to announce a partnership with the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center and Nicolaus Glomb, MD, MPH, an Assistant Clinical Professor in the UCSF department of Emergency Medicine through a $106,416 research grant. The funds will be used to conduct a study on the prehospital presentation of pediatric behavioral health emergencies (BHEs); measure factors that may influence the decisions of EMS personnel and police officers to utilize restraints; and systematically assess implicit bias and its role in these decisions.

There is a growing body of evidence documenting racial disparities in the treatment of adult BHEs especially related to the use of physical and chemical restraints, placing some patients at risk for differential treatment. Through this research, CARESTAR hopes to determine if similar disparities exist in the pediatric behavioral health population and what role such disparities play in the delivery of equitable and safe care for children.
The CARESTAR Foundation also just awarded a $200,000 grant to the Hope and Heal Fund, the only state-based fund investing in a public health, racial equity, and community-based approach to preventing gun violence in California.

As part of the grant, CARESTAR will join Hope and Heal's Steering Committee which includes representatives from Cedars-Sinai, the California Endowment, and the Blue Shield of California Foundation among others. In addition to providing advice and input into the fund’s strategy and sustainability, as a Committee member we are excited to learn more about emerging strategies to reduce gun violence, and to offer our guidance on how the fund might invest in reducing racial health disparities in emergency and prehospital care.
The CARESTAR Foundation has awarded 62 grants totaling more than $10 million since its inception in 2017, working towards our vision to bring equitable, unified, and compassionate emergency and prehospital care to all Californians.
During Pride Month, we celebrate and recognize LGBTQ+ individuals, advocates, and allies, and stand in solidarity to continue our fight against inequity and discrimination. #HappyPrideMonth 🌈🎉

Fatima Angeles - VP of Programs at The California Wellness Foundation
Fatima Angeles Named Executive Director of the Levi Strauss Foundation

Congratulations to CARESTAR board member, Fatima Angeles, named as the next executive director of the Levi Strauss Foundation!

“I am honored to lead the Levi Strauss Foundation as it continues its pioneering work to advance social justice and human rights,” Fatima said. “I have long admired the foundation’s courage and willingness to be among the first funders to invest in and speak out about the most pressing issues of the day. As a woman of color and an immigrant, I am proud to bring my full self to this role – my knowledge, my lived experience and my commitment to ensuring that immigrants and people of color participate fully in philanthropy and social justice changemaking.”

What We're Seeing & Reading
Decoupling Psychiatric Crisis Response from Policing
An address by three young psychiatrists of color in The New England Journal of Medicine calls attention to the failings of the U.S. mental healthcare emergency response system, acknowledging the personal conflict of counseling patients to trust a system fraught with the possibility of lethal consequences for Black and other marginalized minorities. Mad in America

10 Things to Know About the Changing Scope of Out-of-hospital Care
How will community paramedicine and other different approaches to traditional EMS care shape the industry moving forward? EMS1

Why the Time Has Come for Statewide Data Exchange in California
A statewide health data exchange that would enable leaders to do a better job protecting public health and would provide better health care for all. California Health Care Foundation

Lawmakers Pressure Newsom to ‘Step Up’ on Racism as a Public Health Issue
State Democratic lawmakers are pressuring Governor Newson to dedicate $100 million per year from the state budget, beginning July 1, to fund new health equity programs and social justice experiments that might help break down systemic racism. California Healthline
Our Mission: To improve health outcomes for all Californians, we use a racial equity lens to fund and advocate for improvements to our emergency response system.

Our Vision: All Californians experience an emergency response system that is equitable, unified, and compassionate. The lives of people touched by trauma or injury dramatically improve because they receive the appropriate care, services and supports they need to heal and prevent re-injury.

©2021 CARESTAR Foundation. All rights reserved.