Blue & You Foundation awards another round of rapid-response COVID-19 relief grants

The Blue & You Foundation for a Healthier Arkansas has awarded nine additional grants in its Rapid-Response COVID-19 Relief program, which will provide up to $1.7 million in grants to organizations in Arkansas working to prevent the spread of coronavirus or helping communities deal with its effects.

New Rapid-Response COVID-19 Relief grants were awarded to:

• Arkansas Hospice, Inc., Little Rock ($148,715) – to provide safe delivery of healthcare-related services to hospice and palliative care patients and families and support social distancing for remote workers by using a new IT platform for telehealth. This solution also builds a new, long-term, sustainable model for patients and families in a 43-county service area in Arkansas.
• Mercy Health Foundation Northwest Arkansas, Rogers ($147,860) – to convert 29 rooms to airborne infection isolation rooms that will create a crucial barrier to help protect patients, healthcare workers and the community from the spread of the coronavirus.
• Arkansas Rural Health Partnership, Lake Village ($136,400) – to enable member hospitals to provide quality and specialty care via telehealth to COVID-19 patients throughout south Arkansas. Funding will be used to purchase telehealth equipment and supplies for all participating sites.
• St. Bernards Development Foundation, Jonesboro ($126,705) – to convert emergency department treatment rooms into “negative-pressure” rooms for improved infection control and respiratory treatment and to purchase testing equipment for faster diagnosis and treatment of patients who have COVID-19 symptoms.
• White River Health System, Batesville ($112,000) – to expand telehealth services to COVID-19 patients and high-risk patients who have chronic diseases by implementing remote patient monitoring in north central Arkansas.
• University of Arkansas Foundation (UAMS), Little Rock ($60,848) – to support the UAMS COVID-19 Mobile Triage project to expand access to COVID-19 screening/testing, particularly in underserved Arkansas communities and rural areas that lack adequate testing resources. Funding will be used to purchase a van to support a permanent mobile triage unit, allowing a continuous deployment schedule to reach more Arkansans.
• The CALL, Little Rock ($8,000) – to purchase technology to establish online training and support groups during the pandemic for foster families and prospects, and to ensure continued communication among all participants in the foster care system.
• Boys & Girls Club of Benton County, Bentonville ($5,152) – to purchase personal protective equipment and implement more robust cleaning and sanitizing procedures.to keep its member children and staff safe.
• Holy Sews, Inc. Little Rock ($5,000) – to produce 2,500 protective cloth masks for distribution to healthcare workers, police officers, grocery store workers and nursing home employees.

The Blue & You Foundation, an independent licensee of the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, serves the state of Arkansas and is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. In its 19 years of operation, the Blue & You Foundation has awarded more than $36 million to more than 1,900 health-improvement programs in Arkansas.