His sudden death, at the age of 60, left many with the feeling that his important crusade, defending the central value of social determinants in human health, would also come to a halt. Fortunately, it won’t. Thanks to a substantially funded new initiative led by his widow, Denise Bradley-Tyson, and the American Heart Association, Bernard Tyson’s work and message have had an afterlife.
This morning, Bradley-Tyson and the AHA announced 10 new investments from the Bernard J. Tyson Impact Fund that build on the kinds of community empowerment ideas and programs that Tyson promoted as CEO of Kaiser Permanente. And these investments have real financial strength, thanks to some wealthy and influential donors who supported Tyson’s efforts when he was alive. Lynne and Marc Benioff have donated $ 1 million to help anchor the fund, as has the foundation of New York philanthropists Elizabeth Elting and Michael Burlant. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos also made a significant donation, although the amount has not been disclosed.
“Bernard was a man on a mission during his time on earth,” says his widow, Bradley-Tyson, who serves as chair of the fund’s executive committee.
Crucial to Tyson’s healthcare model is simply making sure people have access to care, and the challenge and urgency of that principle has been made clear in COVID, which has disproportionately sickened and killed people from all over. the world. color in the United States
There are several explanations (or theories) for this, but one widely recognized reason is a medical concept called “acute over chronic”: when a person already has a long-term health condition, such as hypertension or diabetes, it is much more prevalent. . in minority populations in the United States, they are much more likely to suffer severe consequences from an acute infection.
The Bernard J. Tyson Impact Fund hopes to address this issue head-on with its inaugural class of “investees” in the Oakland / San Francisco region. For starters, that means providing care to patients in their spoken language, including through text messages that encourage people to come in for routine care and medical exams.
On the same front, the fund is also investing in North East Medical Services, a large community health center in San Francisco that targets low-income Asian immigrant communities and also provides care in the language of its patients.
Additional investments are focused on providing access to affordable housing for people in underserved and low-income communities. These include New Destiny Housing Corporation, a New York-based non-profit organization, and in the Bay Area, the Alameda County Spanish Speaking Unity Council, Inc. (Unity Council). Other grantees, all of which are minority-owned and / or minority-run, focus on providing local communities, whether in New York or Northern California, better access to nutritious food, with tools to develop their financial resilience or access to mental health services.
All of these themes were integrated into Bernard Tyson’s holistic view of human health. He believed that it was almost impossible for a person to be well physically, mentally and emotionally if they lived in an environment of violence, had little access to healthy food or did not have a roof over their head. It’s terrifying that those descriptions apply to the environment roughly 15% of the US population lives in. An estimated 50 million people in the US are at increased risk for cardiovascular disease because they lack needs. I eat the food. a healthy, clean and safe environment, quality education and housing, according to the American Heart Association, where Tyson has long served on the Board of Directors.
