Our focus is to assure access to opportunity for every young person in the United States. Our demonstration sites will likely preference investment in the youth and families who have least access to opportunity (e.g. where we can most impact community outcomes, while saving taxpayer dollars from avoided downstream spending.) It is vital for everyone in our nation that the kids who experience the least access to opportunity, get a fair shot; starting by investing in the critical period from preconception to 5 years old.
Significantly and sustainably increasing investment in coordinated local actions that maximize thriving of youth and their families. This will improve lives and create significant public and private return on investment downstream. We are focused on increasing the flow of commercial capital to the youth developmental life course, by creating financial incentives that reward successful investment in upstream flourishing. (Instead of today’s vast overspending in response to illness and social failure.)
Increasing “upstream” investment in youth and families, while investing in the Vital Conditions of Health and Well-Being,* (e.g. social needs such as food and housing, primary care/behavioral health, and access to opportunity) - is a precursor to improving US flourishing outcomes. Further, it is less expensive than the current reactive spending paradigm, both public and private, which simply funds amelioration of illness and social failure. Ensuring that all youth can flourish reflects our nation’s values and is essential to a healthy economy and national security.
* See https://rippel.org/vital-conditions/
Our lead IIF demonstration sites for proof of concept/tests of change are Cincinnati and Columbus Ohio and Anne Arundel County Maryland. In Ohio, these sites are anchored by their leading regional children’s hospitals, large employers, local government agencies, philanthropies and civic partnerships. The Ohio heartland, comprising most of Ohio south of Cleveland, was named as one of four inaugural NY Fed “Making Missing Market” sites. Anne Arundel County Maryland, specifically the Brooklyn Park neighborhood, is anchored by a strong civic partnership that is part of Maryland’s ENOUGH initiative. Cumberland County TN is a future demonstration region in development, among other emerging high-capacity and funding-ready locales.
In each region, IIF and local partners are building on strong cross-sector community collaboratives, and formalizing these to deliver proven comprehensive individualized and coordinated wraparound support to identified youth and their families along with key investments in their neighborhoods. Ultimately the goal is not to privatize, nor provide ever more downstream health and social services funding -- but to redirect investment upstream, to transform youth and family outcomes.
IIF is active on the ground in our leading demonstration sites in the Ohio heartland and Anne Arundel County, Maryland - while also building out the “backbone” support infrastructure with shared services (data, methodology, financing mechanisms, etc.) needed to support scale and spread nationwide in the years ahead. We are also engaging with philanthropic partners in these sites, conducting “tests of change” that operationalize outcomes-based financing. In this way, we can generate the data and learning required to unlock commercial capital, ultimately tapping trillions of dollars in fixed income securities in service of flourishing.
Our intended outcome is the transformation of how health and social services are funded in the United States to increase youth flourishing, and in turn, the long-term well-being and wealth of the American people. This will result in the shrinkage of downstream services and a variety of rehabilitative services (avoided costs) and the development of more comprehensive service delivery systems – so as to generate positive change in the lives of individual youth and their families and the neighborhoods in which they live.