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Our Focus

Closing the Life Expectancy Gap

Our Goal,
In Focus

To build health equity and increase personal and community safety and well-being across Chicago’s neighborhoods

Vision for Change

We believe Chicago can be a city where life expectancy is no longer determined by geography or demographics. Where all Chicagoans experience good health, healing and dignity. Where all neighborhoods feel safe, community sounds like nature and laughter, and systems respond with holistic and coordinated care. In this Chicago, approaches that build connection and hope — even in moments of crisis — become the norms that guide our collective and equitable future.

Why We Focus on Closing the Life Expectancy Gap

Life expectancy in Chicago differs dramatically between central and south- or west-side neighborhoods. The most breathtaking difference — 20 years — exists between the Loop and West Garfield Park. (Source:  Chicago Health Atlas)

Chicago Loop Life Expectancy 87 years
West Garfield Park Life Expectancy67 years

Factors that Cause the Life Expectancy Gap

The causes are clear and well-documented. Known health, behavioral and community conditions all play a role, and so do deeper structural forces rooted in race, geography and systemic disinvestment. 

But the systems meant to help people stay safe and well are not working. When these systems respond to public health crises such as overdose and gun violence, their response is too often fractured and punitive, under-resourced and disconnected from the history, realities and desires of the communities they serve.

Health Conditions

COMMUNITY Conditions

Behavioral Factors

Structural Forces

A woman with curly hair stands at the open door of a white bus, holding a clipboard and wearing a beige jacket and black hoodie. A man sits inside the bus.

The Changes We Seek Through Our Grantmaking

Changing the dynamics that keep inequity in place requires moving beyond reactive responses and investing in coordinated, holistic approaches and systems that address the root causes of the life expectancy gap.

Closing the life expectancy gap means moving away from punishment and toward healing.

Our grantmaking supports organizations and initiatives that work in key priority areas and use specific approaches to contribute meaningfully to these outcomes:

  • Improved individual and community health, well-being and life expectancy in Chicago’s historically disinvested neighborhoods
  • Narrowed life expectancy gap among Chicago neighborhoods overall and reduction in early mortality rates of south- and west-side residents, with particular attention to the people at highest risk for early mortality and those who cycle through the health, homelessness, criminal-legal and other public systems
  • Stronger, more coordinated community health infrastructure and systems that use people-centered, healing approaches shown to improve health outcomes
  • Significant improvements to the demonstrated drivers of Chicago’s life expectancy gap, with particular attention to the rates of opioid overdose and gun violence deaths

Grantmaking Priorities

Ending Cycles of Harm

Many Chicagoans at highest risk for early mortality cycle repeatedly through the health, homelessness, criminal-legal and other public systems without receiving the coordinated, healing-centered support these systems should provide. To change this, we direct resources toward the development and strengthening of:

Healing and Harm Reduction Infrastructure that:

  • increases care access, integration and effectiveness  
  • infuses care with prevention, harm reduction, healing and desistance policies, practices and services  
  • reduces the rate of overdose, homelessness, early mortality, or high levels of exposure to violence and harm experienced by a disproportionate number of Chicagoans in historically disinvested neighborhoods

Social Service and Healthcare System Transformation to Provide Coordinated, Holistic Care in an integrated system that:

  • coordinates care and information within and across systems to address challenges related to poor health, substance use, violence, and economic and housing instability 
  • eliminates barriers to accessing public benefits and high-quality comprehensive care in neighborhoods with service gaps and historic disinvestment
  • addresses healthcare workforce shortages and pipelines by investing in networks of and career pathways for trusted messengers
  • transforms how human services can be better resourced, targeted and equitable

Deeper Investments in Critical Drivers

Our grants will go deeper in two targeted areas where there is particular opportunity for impact in Chicago, especially for those at highest risk for early mortality:

Family and Community Violence Prevention and Intervention Programs, Policies and Research that:

  • focus on breaking cycles of violence within families and communities, with an emphasis on gun violence and systems that reinforce harm 
  • build community cohesion, connectedness and healing to create conditions for reduced violence 
  • provide wraparound supports to adults and young people directly impacted by violence 
  • increase community voice in public safety 

Opioid Overdose Reduction Programs, Policies and Research that:

  • focus on meaningfully reducing overdose deaths in Chicago  
  • build formalized partnerships between the substance use and healthcare, homelessness and violence-prevention sectors
  • demonstrate principles and practices of harm reduction, dignity, compassion, choice and respect  

While these are the priority areas that will guide grantmaking toward our Closing the Life Expectancy Gap goal for the next several years, we are also eager to learn of — and may occasionally provide grants to — other innovative approaches and effective ideas that show promise toward the ultimate goal of increased life expectancy in Chicago’s historically disinvested communities.

Mural Pan de Vida

Arts and Culture in Closing the Life Expectancy Gap

The Foundation encourages arts and culture-based efforts as part of this goal. The arts are known to inspire and improve healing, wellness and community connection. We will support organizations that work at the intersection of arts and wellness, build social-emotional skills and improve engagement with communities, schools and neighborhood anchors.

Approaches We Seek to Fund

Real transformation happens when programs, community power, infrastructure, policies and new ideas move forward together. That’s why we fund work that drives progress in the above Grantmaking Priorities and that takes one or more of the following approaches: 

Immediate intervention

Direct services, programs, and critical care to help alleviate the effects of poverty and inequity and improve quality of life 

Typical grant range: $50,000 – $150,000. Final grant amounts vary based on several factors and may differ from the amount requested.

Community power and influence

Organizations, networks, and coalitions working to build community, trust, and shared goals to act together to influence change 

Typical grant range: $75,000 – $150,000. Final grant amounts vary based on several factors and may differ from the amount requested.

Ecosystem of change

Efforts to create critical infrastructure and conditions for social change through multiplier effects such as research and data dissemination, public awareness efforts, convenings, leadership development, and nonprofit sector strengthening 

Typical grant range: $100,000 – $250,000. Final grant amounts vary based on several factors and may differ from the amount requested.

Community innovation

Proof-of-concept efforts to develop, pilot, or otherwise accelerate creative ideas that are responsive to emerging community needs and that can provide shared learning for community, the field and philanthropy

Typical grant range: $50,000 – $150,000. Final grant amounts vary based on several factors and may differ from the amount requested.

Learn More About the Kinds of Outcomes We Aim to Support
Learn More About Our Grantmaking Process

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