Created in 1997 as a separate component of St. Luke’s Episcopal Health System (SLEHS), St. Luke’s Episcopal Health Charities (SLEHC) is a grant-making public charity with 501(c)(3) status. It provides the Houston community and communities within the 57-county Episcopal Diocese of Texas with a much-needed resource: a charity devoted exclusively to assessing and enhancing community health, not just for ill-care, but for lifelong health and well-being. To date, SLEHC has awarded over $73.8 million to selected, non-profit service programs throughout the Diocese. As a result of its first two years of work, SLEHC received the 1999 National Philanthropy Day Outstanding Foundation Award by the National Society of Fundraising Executives, Greater Houston Chapter.

Five Service Domains:

St. Luke’s Episcopal Health Charities seeks to advance community health through the five service domains:

Information Systems, including the Community Health Information System, our online, interactive website that combines demographic, health and social data for the 57-county Diocese of Texas,the Community Resource Directory, which contains over 12,000 health and human service programs for the 13-county area of the Texas Gulf Coast and Project Safety Net, a bilingual resource listing of over 70 safety net clinics and their associated services in Harris County. The newest feature is the Breast Health Portal, a resource listing current and free health access information for breast health services in Harris and contiguous counties.

Healthy Neighborhood Initiatives, a replicable, neighborhood-based, participatory assessment model to advance community health in meaningful and measurable ways. Now active in ten Houston-area neighborhoods, the model is an eight-step process adapted by individual neighborhoods; it has served as well as an “incubator” for Federally Qualified Health Center development.

Community-Wide Initiatives are broader applications not limited to a specific geographic area but focused, for example, on distinct populations, such as the elderly or adolescents; health problems, such as obesity; modes of service delivery, such as mobile health; and organizational support, such as capacity building.

Community Investment, which includes management of over $73.8 million in grants to more than 1,280 health-related programs in 39 Texas counties, and provides an online application, capacity building tools and services as well as a grant evaluation workstation with outcomes tools.

Center of Excellence serves the mission of The Charities through innovative research and community training. The Center partners with public and private organizations to advance community health. It trains professional and community members in methods of community-based research and conducts community-based research.