Report on Stewardship
MT. SINAI COMMUNITY PARTNERS, DONORS AND FRIENDS:
From its very beginning, the Mt. Sinai Health Foundation has recognized that government plays the biggest role in the health and health care of all Americans. What government at all levels does - or does not do - has an enormous effect on populations we at Mt. Sinai care a great deal about, namely children, seniors, and low-income populations who must rely on government for their health and well-being. Recent changes to the health and human services safety-net implemented by both the state and federal government have challenged Mt. Sinai and health philanthropy writ large to safeguard access to health services for these at-risk populations. Of perhaps greatest concern are new policies to significantly reduce Medicaid eligibility as well as misinformation concerning the safety and efficacy of childhood immunizations. This annual report highlights several Mt. Sinai initiatives aimed at countering these harmful, potentially life-threatening changes. Through these leadership activities, Mt. Sinai hopes not only to help vulnerable Clevelanders, but to shine a spotlight on what philanthropy can do to ensure sound health policy at all levels of government.
IN GRATITUDE FOR COMMUNITY SUPPORT AND GRANTEE PARTNERS
Mt. Sinai does not exist in a vacuum. Much of what it has accomplished is the result of broad partnerships with grantees, civic leaders, government and other Cleveland grantmakers. We express gratitude to these long-time partners as well as to Mt. Sinai donors for enabling us to implement and multiply the impact of our work to build a healthier Cleveland. As we persevere in our mission of Health Policy work, Academic Medicine & Bioscience, Equitable Health Outcomes, and Health of the Jewish Community, we welcome your input and support.
Chair
Board of Directors
President
RESTORING PUBLIC TRUST IN CHILDHOOD IMMUNIZATIONS
Grandparents for vaccines
In December 2025, Mt. Sinai was approached by Arthur Lavin, MD, a highly respected, recently retired, Harvard-trained pediatrician. Dr. Lavin told us of a national organization he had recently founded in Cleveland called Grandparents for Vaccines. The mission of Grandparents for Vaccines is to restore public trust in childhood immunization by using the trusted voices of the nation’s grandparents. Within months of its launch, in September 2025, Grandparents for Vaccines had established chapters in nearly every state and had received both local and national media attention, including from NBC News describing the group’s work.
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Grandparents advocate for vaccination by sharing childhood illness stories amid skepticism
-NBC News.
What began as a volunteer enterprise had grown so large it needed full-time management and direction. To accomplish this, Mt. Sinai made a $250,000 grant in March 2026 to help Grandparents for Vaccines hire its first-ever executive director and take other steps to professionalize the new organization. And because restoring the public’s trust in vaccines was at the nexus of Mt. Sinai’s interest in primary prevention and sound health policy, we decided to incubate the new organization in our office, serving as its fiscal agent and in other roles as Grandparents for Vaccines leadership requested.
Peter L. Salk, MD
Mt. Sinai Annual Meeting and Cleveland City Club Forum
In June 2026, the Foundation sponsored several events featuring Peter Salk, MD, eldest son of polio vaccine developer Jonas Salk, MD, and Donna Lindsay Salk, who worked alongside his father at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California. Dr. Salk’s presentations focused on human disease before vaccines, development of his father’s polio vaccine, and the magical time in American history when, in 1952, church bells rang, factory whistles blew, and children were sent home early from school, because the announcement had been made that Dr. Salk’s vaccine had been proven effective in preventing dreaded polio.
American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) – Ohio Chapter
As physicians continue to confront declining vaccination rates and growing public confusion fueled by misinformation, a $50,000 Mt. Sinai grant is supporting Ohio AAP’s outreach activities in Greater Cleveland to inform parents of the safety and efficacy of childhood immunizations and restore confidence in long-established protocols of routine preventative pediatric care.
Grantmakers In Health – Philanthropy’s Role in Restoring Public Trust
Mt. Sinai also provided leadership to the field of health philanthropy on what foundations can do to address vaccine hesitancy. In June 2026, Program Officer Shelby Kaemmerer served on a panel for a session at the Grantmakers In Health Annual Conference on Health Philanthropy entitled, “Protecting Vaccine Access, Confidence, and Equity.”
Joining Shelby on the panel were representatives of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, The CDC Foundation, The Governors Public Health Alliance, and Johns Hopkins Medicine.
Grantmakers In Health also published and disseminated an issues brief written by Mt. Sinai staff and Grandparents for Vaccines staff entitled, Changing the Vaccine Conversation Before It’s Too Late—What Can Philanthropy Do? - Grantmakers In Health Report.
THE FEDERAL HEALTH SAFETY-NET
NEW ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENTS
Health of the Jewish Community
The federal Affordable Care Act of 2010 expanded the Medicaid program, allowing an additional 700,000 Ohioans to access health care. Mt. Sinai is concerned about what federal eligibility changes to the health and human services safety-net will mean to low-income members of the Jewish community and the revenue streams of Jewish-sponsored agencies. As a result, we provided a special $250,000 grant to the Jewish Federation of Cleveland, so that the Mt. Sinai program staff and Federation’s planning department could work in partnership to propose solutions. This partnership has been extremely productive, and grant allocations to Jewish Family Service Association (JFSA) and Gesher will ensure that members of the Jewish community who are at risk of losing their benefits, particularly Medicaid, are identified and are re-enrolled according to the new federal guidelines.