For decades, for-profit nursing homes and assisted living facilities have seen profit maximization overrun social mission. The result has been the neglect\u2014or even abuse\u2014of the frail and elderly, a situation that became\u00a0patently clear amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Even though companies are funded through public Medicaid and Medicare dollars, patients receive little protection.<\/p>

Fortunately, existing policy tools can address this. Specifically, we propose using federal tax credits, combined with Medicare and Medicaid dollars, to restructure the ownership and financing of the nursing care industry. By making federal payment contingent on partial employee and impact investor ownership, limiting the use of complex organizational structures, and sweetening the deal with tax credit incentives, we believe the federal government can restore the alignment of the nursing care and assisted living industries with a social mission of providing patients with top-quality care.<\/p>

Numerous studies demonstrate that for-profit senior care facilities show higher rates of neglect and abuse when compared with similar nonprofit entities (Comondore et al. 2009). These statistics hold true across time and national boundaries (Brennan et al. 2012) and demonstrate the failure of government regulations to rein in abuses (Coskun 2022; Silver-Greenberg and Gebeloff 2021). Moreover, the for-profit service quality gap worsens when private equity intersects with complex corporate structures. A rigorous study shows that private equity ownership of long-term care facilities increases the short-term mortality of Medicare patients by 10 percent (Gupta et al. 2021).<\/p>

Today, 70 percent of US nursing home providers are for-profit businesses (Goldstein, Silver-Greenbergand, and Gebeloff 2020; Lendon et al. 2019). While one approach might be to shift provision back to nonprofits entirely, we suggest a middle-of-the-road intervention that makes skilled caregivers co-owners and incentivizes for-profit providers to maximize their social mission through a tax credit mechanism.<\/p>

US long-term care businesses (see Table 1) often operate under conditions where they have an extreme information advantage over their customers. This is because those who pay for services are not typically the people directly receiving the services (Chou 2002). As a result, the buyer often unknowingly purchases poor-quality services for a vulnerable individual who is typically unable to communicate service shortfalls. We posit that an antidote to this situation is to rein in profit maximization that benefits private investors.<\/p>

Read the full article about nursing care by Janelle A. Kerlin, Meng Yeand Wendy Chen at Nonprofit Quarterly.

The average historically Black college and university received 178 times less funding from foundations than the average Ivy League school in 2019, according to a new report on the underfunding of HBCUs released Tuesday.<\/p>

The study -- conducted by the philanthropic research group Candid and ABFE, a nonprofit that advocates for investments in Black communities \u2013 found that the eight Ivy League schools received $5.5 billion from foundations compared to $45 million for the 99 HBCUs in 2019. Between 2002 and 2019, foundation support of HBCUs declined 30%, even before inflation is taken into account.<\/p>

\u201cWe were not surprised by the findings because philanthropy generally funds Black-led nonprofit organizations disproportionately less than other similarly situated organizations,\u201d said Susan Taylor Batten, ABFE\u2019s president and CEO. \u201cHowever, we were surprised by the data that indicated the enormity of the disparate funding between Ivy League colleges and HBCUs.\u201d<\/p>

Some study participants blamed systemic racism for the underfunding. Others said it was a result of limited connections between philanthropists and HBCU leaders.<\/p>

In any case, the disparity is even more problematic, experts say, because HBCUs have proven themselves so effective in educating Black students.<\/p>

According to the UNCF, the nation\u2019s largest private provider of scholarships and other educational support to Black students, HBCUs account for 80% of Black judges, 50% of Black doctors, and 50% of Black lawyers. Studies show that Black HBCU graduates earn $900,000 more in their lifetimes than Black graduates from predominantly white institutions or Black workers without college degrees.<\/p>

Those arguments may have become more convincing in the racial reckoning that followed the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020. Preliminary estimates showed a 453% increase in foundation funding to HBCUs in that year.<\/p>

That $249 million in donations does not include the $550 million that philanthropist MacKenzie Scott gave to 22 HBCUs that year, including $50 million to Prairie View A&M University in Texas.<\/p>

Read the full article about HBCU funding by Glenn Gamboa at abcNEWS.

Partnership for a Healthier America (PHA) is working to transform the United States food system to achieve health equity and ensure that everyone can access nutritious, high-quality, and culturally relevant food.<\/p>