TCWF's grantmaking addresses many aspects of the relationship between work and health.

The centerpiece of our grantmaking in work and health has been the Work and Health Initiative. Authorized by TCWF’s board in 1995 for a total of $20 million over five years, this grantmaking program has four distinct components, complemented by an Initiative-wide evaluation that is being conducted by a team of investigators from Claremont Graduate University. All of our Initiative grantees were selected via competitive statewide requests for proposals.

Additionally, we have provided $1 million per year in general grants for a range of work and health-related projects proposed by agencies throughout the state, including some grants for core operating support of key organizations in the field. These grants have included support for projects to improve the working conditions of immigrant and low-wage laborers, worksite health promotion programs for employees in small businesses, addressing mental health barriers for people making the transition from welfare to work, and expanding employment opportunities for people with disabilities.

The components of the Work and Health Initiative are listed below and correlated with the work and health themes reviewed here.

Computers In Our Future. Good jobs in California increasingly require computer skills, and surveys indicate that access to computers and technology training are unevenly distributed in the population. Youth from middle- and high-income families have far more experience with computers and training in technological skills than youth from low-income communities.⁵⁷ To offer California youth from low-income communities greater access to computers and computer training, and thereby enhance their educational and employment opportunities, TCWF has funded 11 community computing centers in geographically diverse areas of California. These centers provide many low-income youth and adults access to training and opportunities to develop technological skills that are anticipated to have long-term positive impacts on their health. This program intervention draws upon a number of the findings in the research literature, including themes one through five and 11 above, which relate employment status and income to health.

Health Insurance Policy Program. Because of its centrality as an access point to health coverage for most Californians, as well as its volatility in a rapidly changing health marketplace,it is critically important to have a solid base of information about employer-sponsored health insurance—its availability, cost and quality. It is also important to explore and support those groups in California using creative methods to increase the number of individuals who have access to insurance through the workplace. The Health Insurance Policy Program funds researchers at the University of California at Berkeley and at Los Angeles to research and publish an annual inventory of health insurance in California with recommendations for policies to expand its availability.⁵⁸ A grant to the Center for Governmental Studies for the Insure the Uninsured Program supports action-oriented strategies to increase access to health insurance.⁵⁹ The health rationale for this strategy of improving the health of Californians is provided in theme number six above.

Winning New Jobs. California’s economy has rebounded from the serious recession in the early 1990s to produce significant numbers of new jobs. While this growth is good for the overall economy, it masks considerable turbulence in some industries and professions that continues to result in people losing their jobs. Despite a booming California economy in 1999 that has brought record lows in unemployment rates, a fifth of California workers reported in 1999 that they had been displaced from a job in the past three years, and of those, about half had lost jobs in the past year.⁶⁰ The Winning New Jobs program funds an intervention developed and evaluated at the University of Michigan and implemented in California at three sites coordinated by Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation. This program helps workers who have recently lost their jobs gain the skills necessary to successfully become reemployed and to buffer themselves against the negative health and mental health consequences so frequently associated with job loss. This program is being implemented in California at the NOVA Private Industry Council in Silicon Valley, the Los Angeles County Office of Education, and Proteus in Fresno and other Central Valley communities, and aims to serve 5,000 individuals. The social science research described in themes two and three above support this funding approach.

Future of Work and Health Program. The goal of the Future of Work and Health Program is to understand the rapidly changing nature of work and its impact on the health of Californians. To accomplish this, the Foundation has made grants and brought together various groups to focus their attention on the work and health of Californians. A panel of experts in economics and health—including researchers and practitioners — was convened to advise the Foundation on those issues most important to the future work and health of Californians. The panel identified three critical trends: 1) significant numbers of Californians are being left behind in a boom economy; 2) income inequality is increasing in California at a pace faster than the rest of the nation; and 3) significant changes in the contract between employer and employee are leaving many Californians without basic forms of social insurance and creating barriers to upward mobility. Based on this information, TCWF has made seven grants to research and service organizations to develop a deeper understanding about these trends. Finally, we awarded a grant to the Institute for Health Policy Studies at the University of California, San Francisco to fund a three-year longitudinal survey — the California Work and Health Survey — that assesses the work and health of Californians. The broad scope of this program builds on all of the research findings described above.