The Duke Endowment aims to support communities in North Carolina and South Carolina by nurturing children, promoting health, educating minds, and enriching spirits. It focuses on improving health over time through promoting healthy lifestyles and ensuring access to essential healthcare services. The Endowment is dedicated to addressing and reducing health inequities exacerbated by factors including race, income, and geographic location.
The grant program from The Duke Endowment has a clear focus on health care, particularly on building and supporting innovative models that promote health equity and improve the health of Carolinians. It aims to work with various stakeholders to spread innovative models that improve health outcomes. The Endowment supports projects that increase access to essential health services for underserved populations, evidence-based programs that reduce health disparities in maternal and infant health, models that boost access to mental health services with a focus on pediatric mental health, initiatives that expand access to oral health services, efforts to address social determinants of health through community coalitions, and programs that develop a community-based health workforce.