SPONSORED CONTENT: The Harrisburg area is a wonderful place to live and work, and Capital Blue Cross is proud to be a part of the region’s continued growth and success. We started in Harrisburg over 85 years ago and remain proud to call this area home.
Central Pennsylvania, like so many other areas of the country, is struggling to ensure that all people have access to high-quality, affordable health care that can enable them to live fulfilling and productive lives. Regardless of the cause, health equity disparities can affect the quality of life not just of individuals but of entire communities.
It doesn’t have to be this way, and Capital is proud of the work we do to improve health equity and promote health and well-being in the Harrisburg region.
A perfect example is our increased health equity efforts, which help ensure affordable, high-quality health care is accessible to all who need it. Together with our likeminded community partners, we have funded numerous health equity initiatives in and around Harrisburg, including:
- The WellSpan Mobile Mammography Coach offers important breast cancer screenings to uninsured or underinsured women in six counties across the region, regardless of their ability to pay.
- Healthy Harrisburg is being piloted by the UPMC Pinnacle Foundation and provides resources to help UPMC’s most vulnerable patients.
- Mission of Mercy, which provides access to basic health care to the underinsured and uninsured.
- Alder Health Services is committed to improving the health and well-being of the region’s LGBTQ+ communities and people living with HIV/AIDS.
- Harrisburg Area Community College’s dentistry program provides affordable, accessible care to those who might otherwise have difficulty finding it.
We support these diverse and important initiatives because we believe it is critical to Capital’s core mission to close gaps in care and open doors to affordable, accessible, and quality health care. But health equity is not the only area we support toward that goal. Capital also helps fund important regional programs that support basic human needs and services, as well as education, culture, and the arts.
Capital’s contributions to important local causes are not just financial. We also give of ourselves – our energy, our passion, our talent and our time. We do this through an extensive Capital Blue Cross Employee Volunteer Program, where last year 386 Capital employees contributed 8,765 hours of community volunteer time. To put that in context, a full calendar year is 8,760 hours, meaning our employees gave an entire year of time to causes they care about.
Our employees participate in numerous community fundraisers and benefits that Capital hosts throughout the year, the most important of which is our annual support of the United Way of the Capital Region (UWCR). For three consecutive years, Capital’s campaign to support the United Way has raised more than $500,000 per year to support essential programs and services and help individuals and families in the region achieve self-sufficiency.
Whether we have donated millions of dollars to important health or quality of life programs over the years or thousands of hours of our time, we are grateful to be able to work with all of you toward the common goal of a healthy, thriving Harrisburg.
We will continue to do our part by going the extra mile every day to help our region grow, thrive and realize its enormous potential.
Todd Shamash is President and CEO of Capital Blue Cross.
For more information, see www.capbluecross.com.
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