The Connecticut Health Foundation (CT Health) prioritizes three areas: children’s mental health, oral health, and racial and ethnic health disparities.

CT Health addresses these priority areas by effecting positive, sustained change in systems. Systems comprise the interconnected set of policies, regulations, funding, institutions and professional practices, as well as the beliefs, behaviors and attitudes that affect the health of all Connecticut residents.

The systems-change approach addresses the health needs of individuals and groups by focusing on:

• Educating  decision-makers about health policy issues
• Changing institutional policy, practice and behavior
• Changing structures that produce disparities based on race and/or ethnicity
• Reforming professional practices
• Advancing  knowledge to promote change
• Investing in leaders who can influence systems
• Evaluating and addressing the effectiveness of systems change

Children’s Mental Health
Mental health is how people think, feel and act as they face life's situations. It affects how people handle stress, relate to one another and make decisions.

Mental health influences how individuals look at themselves, their lives and others in their lives. Like physical health, mental health is important at every stage of life.

The goal of children’s mental health funding in this priority area is to address the needs of children and families before children enter the juvenile justice system or require the most intensive level of mental health services.

Children's Oral Health
Tooth decay is the most common chronic disease among U.S. children and the most preventable.  Access to dental care is a chronic problem for the estimated 185,000 children and adolescents covered by Connecticut’s HUSKY A (Medicaid) and HUSKY B (SCHIP) programs.

Up to five million U.S. children have dental problems severe enough to wake up with a toothache or lose sleep because of one.  The overwhelming majority of these problems arise from preventable dental and oral diseases.

The goal of the oral health initiative is to improve the oral health of children covered by Medicaid. 

Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities
Health disparities (avoidable differences in health status) are inequitably distributed among Connecticut communities of color. 

The goal of CT Health’s racial and ethnic health disparities funding priority is to invest in systems changes that will close the gaps and ensure that Connecticut’s increasingly diverse communities have equal opportunity to attain good health.