Various types of grants for analysis and research can generate valuable data to support key public policy messages and galvenize communities.

A significant portion of TCWF’s public policy funding has been for policy analysis and research, which is essential to educating policymakers and opinion leaders about the nature of a problem, raising public awareness about neglected issues, developing effective solutions and building support for those solutions. 

TCWF funding in this area has ranged from multimillion-dollar grants to establish public policy institutions to a few thousand dollars for data collection and analysis for a local policy project. Grantees have also ranged widely from the traditional public policy institutions, universities and think tanks, to local community collaboratives and youth groups. Grants have been both for projects and for core operating support for organizations working on policy issues consistent with our mission. 

State Level

Through our initiative grantmaking programs, we funded the establishment of two policy institutions to fill the void in research and nonpartisan analysis available to policymakers and opinion leaders in the areas of violence prevention and health promotion. The Pacific Center for Violence Prevention was established to advance the policy goals of the Foundation’s Violence Prevention Initiative. The California Center for Health Improvement (CCHI)8 was established as part of our Health Improvement Initiative to advance health promotion and disease prevention policy efforts at the statewide level. Both institutions also provided substantial technical assistance to their initiatives’ community action programs working on local policy issues. The research and analyses they have published has been widely used by policymakers, advocates and the media at both the state and local levels. 

The Pacific Center’s use of the scientific literature and analysis of existing databases was critical in building the case for focusing on the role of handguns as an issue in the prevention of youth violence. Through its data analysis, the Pacific Center found that handguns killed more youth up to the age of 19 than motor vehicle crashes, drugs or disease. This information became the linchpin in the public education campaigns and an important tool in shaping the debate about handgun violence. The Pacific Center’s policy briefs and fact sheets helped VPI grantees, policymakers and opinion leaders make the case for handgun control. Other research that played a critical role in advancing the VPI’s goal to restrict access to handguns was a grantee’s report9 showing that 80 percent of the nation’s Saturday night specials were made by five companies within a 45-mile radius of downtown Los Angeles. The report galvanized activists and brought the issue home to the media and policymakers. The Legal Community Against Violence’s legal resource manual for cities and counties on enacting legally sound local ordinances banning firearms provided invaluable guidance to local policymakers. These research efforts are certainly part of the reason why today 41 cities and four counties have bans on Saturday night specials, which led to the Legislature passing a law to ban them throughout the state. Prior to the efforts of the VPI grantees, only eight cities in California had local handgun ordinances. 

Similarly, CCHI reports have been used by state policymakers to address the issues of tobacco prevention, alcohol and drug treatment, mental health, school-based health and physical education. For example, CCHI’s policy briefs on early brain development, alcohol and drug treatment parity, and school-based physical fitness helped inform state policy and programmatic efforts. CCHI is now the leading technical assistance provider to local Proposition 10 Commissions,10 and its award-winning website11 provides local activists with the tools they need to enact health promotion and disease prevention policies in their communities. 

Research and analysis have also been an important component of the state policy efforts of the grantees in our Teen Pregnancy Prevention Initiative and our Work and Health Initiative. Studies on access to family planning services, responsible teen sexual behavior and effective teen pregnancy prevention policies have contributed to efforts to preserve state-funded teen pregnancy prevention programs, increase teen access to confidential contraceptive care, and educate policymakers about teen insights and experiences with sex education. Our Work and Health Initiative’s annual Health Insurance Policy Program report12 has become the reference guide for all sides of the debate on the problem of the uninsured. Even though the statistics do not change dramatically from year to year, producing an annual report has kept the issue of the uninsured in front of the media by providing the “hook” needed to discuss the issue. Advocates at the local level are also able to take advantage of the coverage to give the issue a local spin. 

Outside of the policy work of our initiatives, much of the analysis and research work has been funded through our Special Projects Fund and has been focused on the multitude of issues raised by the devolution of federal responsibility for health and welfare to the states and from there to the counties. When devolution first began, we funded core operating support grants to several state policy organizations to assist in their efforts to analyze the effect of the various federal and state proposals and to generate alternatives that would better serve those in need. The grantees’ policy briefs educated policymakers and the media and gave advocates the information they needed to prevent the adoption of the worst of the proposals and make the case for more effective alternatives. For example, surveys conducted by California Food Policy Advocates, after the passage of welfare reform, found a demonstrable increase in the number of immigrant families, who had previously been eligible for food stamps, without access to adequate food. This documentation helped lead to the establishment of the California Food Assistance Program, which provides state funds for food stamps for legal immigrants. 

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