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How We Work
Committing our resources to remove barriers and improve systems and conditions for a healthier community.
Advancing health equity
Through a unique partnership with St. David's HealthCare, we strategically reinvest proceeds from the hospital system back into the community, with a goal of advancing health equity and improving the health and well-being of our most underserved Central Texas neighbors. Beyond our grantmaking work, we operate the largest mobile dental program in the country providing charity care and offer the largest healthcare scholarship program in Texas, the St. David's Neal Kocurek Program.
Through investment and action, we are committed to centering health equity in all that we do so that all Central Texans have a fair chance to achieve optimal health with no avoidable, unjust, or systematically caused differences in health status due to ethnicity, race, age, ability, or geography. Put simply: we support individuals and families in our community who face barriers to flourishing. We are committed to and will evolve towards upstream and transformational work to improve systems and conditions for a healthier community.
Our Guiding Principles
- Use an equity lens in our work
- Listen, learn, and evolve
- Measure outcomes and strive for high-impact work
- Embrace effective risk-taking
- Make data-driven decisions aligned with evidence, strategy, and community voice
Grantmaking
Advancing health equity in Central Texas
Mobile Dental Program
St. David’s Foundation’s Mobile Dental Program offers 100% free dental care to students at high-need elementary schools in six Central Texas school districts. When school is not in session, our vans partner with area social service agencies to serve adults and families. This is the largest mobile charity dental program in the country.
Neal Kocurek Scholarship
The St. David’s Neal Kocurek Scholarship is the largest healthcare scholarship program in the state of Texas. High school seniors from Bastrop, Caldwell, Hays, Travis, and Williamson counties who want to pursue careers in healthcare and plan to attend college in Texas are eligible to apply for up to $60,000 in financial aid over the course of their higher education.
Learning and Evaluation
Learning from and alongside our community is at the core of everything we do. We are dedicated to ensuring that data, research, and learning drive the evolution of our strategy, support sound funding decisions, and inspire action to advance health equity in Central Texas.
Health equity continues to be our north star. In shifting from a focus on health to one of health equity, we reorient our strategy from just funding services for the most vulnerable to also working to eliminate systemic and cultural barriers preventing healthy outcomes from the outset for generations to come.