Health

The Colorado Health Foundation is selling its share of the Denver metro area's largest hospital group for $1.45 billion, giving up control to a giant for-profit chain while creating the largest charity in the state.

Hospital Corporation of America will pay cash for the foundation's 40 percent interest in a hospital collection that includes Swedish, Presbyterian/St. Luke's, Rose, Sky Ridge and more.

HCA has been the other owner and operating partner in HCA-Health ONE, with seven regional hospitals and dozens of outpatient clinics.

The Nature Conservancy, FEMSA Foundation, Inter-American Development Bank, and Global Environment Facility have announced the launch of a $27 million initiative to capitalize the protection of threatened water resources across Latin America and the Caribbean.

The public-private partnership, which could benefit as many as fifty million people, will work to protect seven million acres of watershed across the region from pollution and development.

More than $4.3 billion was pledged by major public and private donors at a conference in London on Monday to aid projects vaccinating children in developing countries. The conference — co-hosted by the British Government and the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) — had hoped to raise $3.7 billion.

Donors included corporations, philanthropists like Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and governments donating to GAVI for the first time, including Japan and Brazil.

Despite the poor economy, U.S. nonprofit hospitals and health care systems managed an 8 percent increase in philanthropic donations last year, to more than $8 billion, with individual donors contributing almost 60 percent of that total. But fundraising costs climbed and return on investment dipped, according to the fiscal year 2010 Report on Giving USA issued by the Association for Healthcare Philanthropy.

Mark and Terri Little presented the Schenectady Free Health Clinic with a $50,000 donation that will be used to purchase generic drugs for its patients. They used their own foundation to match a $25,000 grant for charity that Mark Little, the head of GE Global Research, received from General Electric Chairman Jeff Immelt in January.

Grants like this one are critical to maintain the clinic's operation in the community. The clinic now operates primarily from private donations and grants, ever since losing the bulk of its state funding about four years ago.

Stamford Hospital has received a $10 million grant from OdysseyRe, a leading worldwide underwriter of reinsurance and specialty insurance based in Stamford, to help fund the Hospital's recently approved Master Facility Plan. OdysseyRe was honored for its gift last night at Stamford Hospital's annual Leadership Dinner, held at the Rockrimmon County Club in Stamford.

Stamford Hospital announced in December 2008 an ambitious master facility plan that would include building a new hospital at its current location over a 10-15 year timeframe. The project is estimated at $575 million.

HIV and AIDS patients in 62 Ohio counties will be served by a single organization starting in July, when the Columbus AIDS Task Force and AIDS Resource Center Ohio merge.

The new nonprofit agency will keep the AIDS Resource Center Ohio name and continue to provide all the services offered by the two organizations. That includes HIV care, testing, prevention and advocacy across 70 percent of the state, including central Ohio.

Cristian Rivera Foundation founder John 'Gungie' Rivera discusses the organization and its fundraising initiatives.

The GAVI Alliance has committed $100 million to help tackle meningitis A in Cameroon, Chad and Nigeria, part of a strategy to save tens of thousands of lives in Africa with a new life-saving vaccine, MenAfriVac.

Hit frequently by epidemics, Africa’s “meningitis belt” consists of 25 countries stretching from Senegal in the west to Ethiopia in the east. A 1996/97 epidemic hit 250,000 people, of whom 25,000 died and 50,000 were left with varying forms of disability.

Developed at around 50 cents per dose, the new single-dose vaccine specifically addresses group A meningococcal meningitis.

Sen. Charles E. Grassley has renewed his effort to get nonprofit medical groups to provide more information to the public about the money they get from pharmaceutical, medical-device and insurance companies.

Mr. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, sent letters about the matter to all but one of the 34 organizations that he had contacted in late 2009 and early 2010, including disease advocacy groups like the American Cancer Society and the American Heart Association and medical-professional groups like the American Academy of Family Physicians and North American Spine Society.