For more information contact:
Kelly Cannon
Kelly.Cannon@BlueKC.com
W: 816.395.3711, C: 816.686-3842
KANSAS CITY, MO. (January 29, 2019) —Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City (Blue KC) and BioNexus KC have issued a Request for Proposals for the Transforming KC Health Research Grant. This grant will award up to $400,000 over two years to help partnering organizations research the relationship between food insecurity and adverse health outcomes, as well as evaluate how best to implement programs that can address this issue.
This is the eighth year of Blue KC’s partnership with BioNexus KC to improve the health and wellness of those living in the Kansas City region. This year, the grant program aims to better understand the links between the socioeconomic, behavioral, and environmental factors that shape our community’s health outcomes.
Understanding that health and nutrition are strongly related, Blue KC and BioNexus KC aim to address and improve social determinants of health for the Kansas City region by improving access to wholesome food options. This research grant not only aims to study the relationship between food insecurity and negative health outcomes, but it also hopes to evaluate how to best implement programs designed to address health disparities in food insecure populations.
“More than 360,000 people in Kansas City – including one in six children – do not know where their next meal will come from. We must do more to address health disparities in food insecure populations throughout our community and that is why we are aligning this grant program with a critical community need and more than doubling our financial commitment to the grantees. We look forward to the innovations and collaborative community partnerships that will come out of the Transforming KC Health Research Grant,” said Qiana Thomason, Vice President of Community Health for Blue KC.
More information about the 2019 Transforming KC Health Research Grant, including eligibility, evaluation criteria and application processes can be found at www.BlueKC.com/HealthGrant. Letters of intent are due on April 22, 2019 by 5 p.m. Full applications should be received no later than May 29, 2019 at 5 p.m. Awards will be funded starting on October 1, 2019.
About Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City, the largest not-for-profit health insurer in Missouri and the only not-for-profit commercial health insurer in Kansas City, has been part of the Kansas City community since 1938. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City provides health coverage services to more than one million residents in the greater Kansas City area, including Johnson and Wyandotte counties in Kansas and 30 counties in Northwest Missouri. Our mission: to provide affordable access to healthcare and to improve the health of our members. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City is an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association. For more information on the company, visit its website at BlueKC.com.
