January 4, 2006
Then Role of Philanthropy in Social Change
and the Foundation's Own Agenda
Risa Lavizzo-Maurey
Pres. & CEO Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
Minutes of the 14th Meeting of the 64th Year
The Old Guard meeting of January 4, 2006 was called to order by President Bill Haynes at 10:12 AM. and the invocation was led by John Marks.
John Frederick gave an erudite and concise summary of Dr. George Hill's December 14th discussion of Thomas Edison's life, genius and unfortunate legacy of pollution, in the wake of the astounding list of inventions which have defined so much of our modern world. John ranged very quickly from belching smoke, to toy trains to the exclaustration of his pipe-smoking brother-in-law by his ten year old daughter, then returned to his seat to the acclaim of his colleagues.
John Schmidt introduced his guest, Arthur Eschenlauer; and Harold Borkan introduced Hazel Spitz as a visitor.
President Haynes next called for a moment of silence to commemorate the death of William Crothers on October 5th last year. He then recognized Bruno Walmsley for his work on the Old. Guard website, now up and running. Instructions for logging-on and the password were made available after the meeting. Bill announced a change in the schedule of speakers, with Michael Teti to grace the podium on January 11th, while the Rush Holt/Charles Jaffin program is moved to February 8th.
Don Dickason, in an unusual appearance, described a letter to be sent to candidates for membership, their sponsors and seconders, indicating that, while the waiting list is long, prospects would be welcome to attend an Old Guard meeting if the guest speaker were to address a topic of signal interest.
Framing the introduction of today's guest, Jim Johnson described the development of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation from its inception in 1936 as the J&J New Brunswick, New Jersey Foundation with local interests; to 1952, when it became the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, reshaping, but retaining, local priorities. In 1972, a bequest of 10 million shares of J&J stock from Robert Wood Johnson's estate catapulted it to the 2nd largest of American foundations, after Ford, and gave it a single all-encompassing goal: To work for the advancement of healthcare.
Jim then introduced a physician who is herself the daughter of two physicians, who is the 4th physician to head the Foundation, but the first to add to an already impressive set of medical credentials, a Wharton School MBA. Our speaker, Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourrey, President and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, is a Seattle native, a Harvard med-school graduate, a specialist in geriatrics and a 20-year member of the Penn's med-school faculty. By way of connecting with the Old Guard's next speaker, Risa announced that her daughter was cox of the lightweight crew, Princeton, class of '02.
Dr. Mourrey's discussion highlighted the professional life of Robert Wood Johnson and her own career as they each moved from a desire to care for the sick and unfortunate, to a broader platform that allowed them to plumb the root causes of poor health and to help society to reach for and find solutions.
"General," as he was called, Robert Wood Johnson, was a chief executive with an intensely personal interest in his company, in the broader health care industry and in his impact as a citizen of the USA and New Jersey. His business creed was simple: We will do well if we take care of our customers, our employees and our community.
During the Depression years he gave grants to study the childhood diseases, ricketts and malnutrition. He paid for dental care for children in New Brunswick. He helped people with their mortgages. He supported doctors who were in financial trouble. As time went along, he began to focus his almost random generosity so it would have longer term effects: by offering medical scholarships and by providing funding to hospitals to improve the quality of medical care. By the time of his death in 1968, General Johnson had turned the silver spoon of his inheritance into a golden spoon that would impact medical care well into the future.
Dr. Mourrey used her own career as a tool to highlight the difference between a Charity and Foundation, much as the General migrated from helping the needy of New Brunswick to using his financial power to sort out the root causes of poor medical service and do something about it. She had been happy as a one-on-one provider of care as a geriatrician – (a field we appreciate more now than when we had adolescent pimples.) She joined the RWJF Clinical Scholar Program at Penn. While there, she saw the potential to make a broader contribution to healthcare in our society. She began to understand the failure of dissimilar regional communications standing in the way of police, fire and ambulance coordination. She saw how a larger group might influence the law of the land to stop subsidizing poor health practices: smoking and lung cancer, fatty foods and childhood obesity, drug use. She began to understand how the political and scholarly muscle of a focused Foundation could change timeworn but accepted practices in the healthcare community. Medical practitioners who used to isolate the dying are now promoting palliative and hospice care for the terminally ill as a result of foundation studies and efforts.
We support charities because they serve an obvious need, and in most cases, show immediate results. The purpose of a foundation is different. It must go for the long haul, following a vision of what can be, or how things can be better. Some critics want foundations to get rid of money more quickly; but innovation, whether it be a technical advance such as at-home glucose monitoring – a 20 year developmental effort –or the hospice movement, or the weaning of a society away from its addiction to tobacco – all these stem from the vision of people who need continuing support from foundations such as ours which shares those visions and has the wherewithal to see them to reality.
After a spirited Q&A session involving organ sharing, gun control, birth control, number of employees (250 staff, 70 program offices, all time bound), and political partisanship,
Doctor Haynes thanked Doctor Lavizzo-Mourrey on behalf of the Old Guard, and the meeting ended promptly at 11:30 a.m.
Respectfully submitted,
(Minutes composed by Jim Ferry and delivered by John Schmidt.)
John Frederick gave an erudite and concise summary of Dr. George Hill's December 14th discussion of Thomas Edison's life, genius and unfortunate legacy of pollution, in the wake of the astounding list of inventions which have defined so much of our modern world. John ranged very quickly from belching smoke, to toy trains to the exclaustration of his pipe-smoking brother-in-law by his ten year old daughter, then returned to his seat to the acclaim of his colleagues.
John Schmidt introduced his guest, Arthur Eschenlauer; and Harold Borkan introduced Hazel Spitz as a visitor.
President Haynes next called for a moment of silence to commemorate the death of William Crothers on October 5th last year. He then recognized Bruno Walmsley for his work on the Old. Guard website, now up and running. Instructions for logging-on and the password were made available after the meeting. Bill announced a change in the schedule of speakers, with Michael Teti to grace the podium on January 11th, while the Rush Holt/Charles Jaffin program is moved to February 8th.
Don Dickason, in an unusual appearance, described a letter to be sent to candidates for membership, their sponsors and seconders, indicating that, while the waiting list is long, prospects would be welcome to attend an Old Guard meeting if the guest speaker were to address a topic of signal interest.
Framing the introduction of today's guest, Jim Johnson described the development of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation from its inception in 1936 as the J&J New Brunswick, New Jersey Foundation with local interests; to 1952, when it became the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, reshaping, but retaining, local priorities. In 1972, a bequest of 10 million shares of J&J stock from Robert Wood Johnson's estate catapulted it to the 2nd largest of American foundations, after Ford, and gave it a single all-encompassing goal: To work for the advancement of healthcare.
Jim then introduced a physician who is herself the daughter of two physicians, who is the 4th physician to head the Foundation, but the first to add to an already impressive set of medical credentials, a Wharton School MBA. Our speaker, Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourrey, President and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, is a Seattle native, a Harvard med-school graduate, a specialist in geriatrics and a 20-year member of the Penn's med-school faculty. By way of connecting with the Old Guard's next speaker, Risa announced that her daughter was cox of the lightweight crew, Princeton, class of '02.
Dr. Mourrey's discussion highlighted the professional life of Robert Wood Johnson and her own career as they each moved from a desire to care for the sick and unfortunate, to a broader platform that allowed them to plumb the root causes of poor health and to help society to reach for and find solutions.
"General," as he was called, Robert Wood Johnson, was a chief executive with an intensely personal interest in his company, in the broader health care industry and in his impact as a citizen of the USA and New Jersey. His business creed was simple: We will do well if we take care of our customers, our employees and our community.
During the Depression years he gave grants to study the childhood diseases, ricketts and malnutrition. He paid for dental care for children in New Brunswick. He helped people with their mortgages. He supported doctors who were in financial trouble. As time went along, he began to focus his almost random generosity so it would have longer term effects: by offering medical scholarships and by providing funding to hospitals to improve the quality of medical care. By the time of his death in 1968, General Johnson had turned the silver spoon of his inheritance into a golden spoon that would impact medical care well into the future.
Dr. Mourrey used her own career as a tool to highlight the difference between a Charity and Foundation, much as the General migrated from helping the needy of New Brunswick to using his financial power to sort out the root causes of poor medical service and do something about it. She had been happy as a one-on-one provider of care as a geriatrician – (a field we appreciate more now than when we had adolescent pimples.) She joined the RWJF Clinical Scholar Program at Penn. While there, she saw the potential to make a broader contribution to healthcare in our society. She began to understand the failure of dissimilar regional communications standing in the way of police, fire and ambulance coordination. She saw how a larger group might influence the law of the land to stop subsidizing poor health practices: smoking and lung cancer, fatty foods and childhood obesity, drug use. She began to understand how the political and scholarly muscle of a focused Foundation could change timeworn but accepted practices in the healthcare community. Medical practitioners who used to isolate the dying are now promoting palliative and hospice care for the terminally ill as a result of foundation studies and efforts.
We support charities because they serve an obvious need, and in most cases, show immediate results. The purpose of a foundation is different. It must go for the long haul, following a vision of what can be, or how things can be better. Some critics want foundations to get rid of money more quickly; but innovation, whether it be a technical advance such as at-home glucose monitoring – a 20 year developmental effort –or the hospice movement, or the weaning of a society away from its addiction to tobacco – all these stem from the vision of people who need continuing support from foundations such as ours which shares those visions and has the wherewithal to see them to reality.
After a spirited Q&A session involving organ sharing, gun control, birth control, number of employees (250 staff, 70 program offices, all time bound), and political partisanship,
Doctor Haynes thanked Doctor Lavizzo-Mourrey on behalf of the Old Guard, and the meeting ended promptly at 11:30 a.m.
Respectfully submitted,
(Minutes composed by Jim Ferry and delivered by John Schmidt.)