The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) is committed to taking bold leaps to transform health in our lifetime and paving the way together to a future where health is no longer a privilege, but a right. To achieve that vision, we are deepening our focus on dismantling structural racism, one of the biggest barriers to health in America. Racism and injustice have become embedded in many structures of American society, including the delivery and financing systems that support medical care, public health programs, and social services.
Effective solutions to systemic racism require medical care organizations working in partnership with public health and social services systems. RWJF’s Systems for Action (S4A) signature research program since 2015 supports research studies. The studies test novel ideas for aligning delivery and financing systems across sectors in ways that address the health and social needs of people experiencing health inequities.
This 2025 call for proposals (CFP) will provide funding for a new cohort of community-led pilot studies to produce new, actionable evidence about how to help medical, social, and public health systems work together to address forms of systemic racism. This CFP focuses specifically on systems alignment (SA) interventions that have the potential to dismantle or disrupt the health effects of systemic racism and to positively affect the health and wellbeing of communities that experience systemic racism. S4A prioritizes SA interventions that, if successful, can be rapidly replicated and spread to many communities and contexts across the U.S. in order to achieve broad national impact.
The applicant organization for this CFP must be a CBO that is actively engaged in serving communities that experience systemic racism.
January 22, 2025, 3 p.m.–4 p.m. ET: Applicant Webinar. Registration required.
January 27 through June 3, 2025: Weekly Office Hours Help Session for Applicants. View schedule and register.
February 24, 2025, 1 p.m.–2 p.m. ET: Applicant Webinar. Registration required.
June 4, 2025 (3 p.m. ET): Deadline for application submission. Late submissions will not be accepted for any reason.
August 22, 2025: Applicants notified of funding decisions.
October 1, 2025: Projects start.