Amid civil unrest in 2020, spurred by various social, political and economic factors, Allina Health had its own moment of reflection. The Minneapolis-based health system, whose corporate headquarters and flagship hospital are blocks from where George Floyd was murdered, evaluated what more it could do for the community.
"We stepped back and asked, 'What more can we do?'" Allina's president and CEO, Lisa Shannon, told Becker's. "We were already deep in assessing and connecting our patients with social determinants of health for community services. We were already doing that on significant levels, but we said, 'Let's take a look at our own investment portfolio.'"
Ms. Shannon said the organization earmarked 1% of its total investment portfolio, which at the time amounted to $30 million, to address issues intersecting with social determinants of health, primarily through loans and support aimed at rebuilding or providing services within the community.
This resulted in various investments in the community, including $3 million through a partnership with the Greater Minnesota Housing Fund to support the construction of affordable apartments in south Minneapolis. The partnership established lower interest rates for the housing developer, which led to more affordable rents. The GMHF plans to reallocate Allina's $3 million repeatedly, in effect yielding more than $40 million worth of affordable housing construction over seven years. The Greater Minnesota Housing Fund will then repay the health system's $3 million investment.
"For us, the first step was earmarking 1% of our investment portfolio, putting a structure and process in place so that we could responsibly assess opportunities that intersect with our social determinants of health priorities," Ms. Shannon said.
She noted that starting with $30 million enabled Allina, which operates 12 hospital campuses, to identify what would be most meaningful for the community.
"There wasn't anything more scientific than that, to be candid," she said. "It was really, let's get started. One percent and $30 million felt like a good place to start, but put all the structure and process around it, and then continually evaluate."
Today, the Midwell apartment complex, which is near the health system's corporate headquarters, has 86 affordable units, 11 of which are reserved for high-priority homeless households. And Allina has allocated the majority of the $30 million to investments in affordable housing, like the Midwell apartments, as well as investments in community development funds and organizations that create and sustain businesses founded by women, people of color, veterans, LGBTQ+ individuals and people with disabilities.
Still, Ms. Shannon acknowledged the challenges involved, such as assessing how to prioritize funds when there is a significant amount of need.
"These funds can't essentially meet all the needs or make up for decades of disinvestment in certain parts of the community," Ms. Shannon said.
"One thing we think about is, how do we use our experience and overcome this challenge by talking about it with others? How do we talk about this in a way that encourages our peers in other healthcare systems to create their own impact-investing portfolios? How do we celebrate the impact it has on the health of communities and individuals? So it is a challenge because even this amount of money doesn't begin to serve all the needs. And yet, if all of us do a little bit, that little bit becomes a lot. We're looking at it that way."