SSM Health Foundation - St. Louis Community Health Impact Fund 

Your Gift Helps When Life Doesn't Go According to Plan

A prescription can't solve hunger. A hospital bed can't solve homelessness. A doctor's appointment can't help if a patient has no way to get there.

Yet challenges like these often determine whether someone heals, recovers, and stays healthy.

Every day, SSM Health patients across the greater St. Louis region face barriers that have nothing to do with medicine and everything to do with their basic needs: food, housing, transportation, and other social determinants of health (SDoH).

The SSM Health – St. Louis Community Health Impact Fund exists to help meet those needs.

Your generosity helps connect patients and families with resources, support, and services that make healing possible.

Healing Happens Beyond Hospital Walls

When someone has access to nutritious food, stable housing, reliable transportation, and community support, they are more likely to recover, manage chronic conditions, and live a healthier life. That's why SSM Health is investing in solutions that address the challenges people face every day.

The Community Health Impact Fund helps make overcoming the hurdles of meeting basic needs possible.

Your Gift at Work

Your support helps connect patients to the resources, care, and community they need to truly heal.

• A patient leaving the hospital shouldn't go home to an empty pantry. Your gift helps connect them to food assistance before they walk out the door.
• Getting to a follow-up appointment shouldn't depend on whether someone can afford the bus. Your support helps remove that barrier.
• "Go home and rest" means something different when you don't have a home. Your gift helps provide safe options for patients experiencing homelessness.
• Hunger and unstable housing don't stay outside the hospital doors. They follow patients in. Your support helps expand the programs that address those realities.
• The organizations already showing up for this community every day need strong partners. Your gift helps us be one.

Every gift helps address the challenges that often stand in the way of a healthier future for patients.

The Needs Are Real. So Is the Impact.

Imagine being discharged from the hospital with nowhere safe to recover, or imagine trying to heal while worrying about where your next meal will come from.

For many SSM Health patients, this is their reality. Our hospitals often report that patients face challenges with food, housing, transportation, and financial stability. For example, more than 15% of families across the St. Louis region experience food insecurity, and that number rises to more than 30% within the City of St. Louis.

These barriers affect more than daily life. They affect recovery, health outcomes, and quality of life.

Together, we can help change that.

The Community Health Impact Fund was launched through a transformational $10 million gift from Carolyn Kindle, CEO and owner of St. Louis CITY SC, president of the Enterprise Mobility Foundation, and a member of the SSM Health System Board. Her leadership reflects a shared belief that everyone deserves the opportunity to live a healthier life.

Now, others have the opportunity to join this effort and help expand its impact across our region.

Help Meet the Needs That Medicine Alone Cannot

The founding sisters began this work more than 150 years ago, caring for people wherever the need existed. That mission continues today.

Support the Community Health Impact Fund and help remove the barriers that stand between patients and better health.