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Washington, D.C. -- Terri Langston, the Public Welfare Foundation’s Senior Program Officer for Health Reform, has been named to receive the Grantmakers in Health Terrance Keenan Leadership Award in Health Philanthropy, the highest honor conferred by the health philanthropy community each year. 

"Ms. Langston's longstanding dedication to health philanthropy, equity, and justice and her outstanding advocacy work have contributed to systemic change in health care across the country," said Susan Zepeda, executive director of the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky and board member of Grantmakers in Health, a Washington-based non-profit educational organization that advises foundations and corporate giving programs. "She embodies the spirit of the Terrance Keenan Award."

Langston, the sole recipient of the 2008 award, is being recognized as a key architect of a multi-tiered approach that has brought together local, state and national advocates and funders in collaborations that combine the energy and agility of grassroots advocates with the analytical and technical expertise of national organizations.  “Terri Langston started funding what has become the concept of ‘systems of advocacy’ long before it was a concept,” says Robert Restuccia, executive director of Community Catalyst, a Boston-based national non-profit advocacy organization devoted to building community leadership for health care reform and Public Welfare Foundation grantee.  “She understood the need to support advocacy of different kinds and at a number of different levels, and she put that approach into practice long before it was articulated as a concept.” 

Margaret O’Bryon, who nominated Langston for the award on behalf of the Health Working Group of the Regional Association of Washington Grantmakers, said that Langston’s leadership “has meant that dozens of previously small, unrecognized, or brand new state-level organizations have received national funding for their grassroots advocacy work on health care, often for the first time and on a continuing basis." 

"Over the years, these grantee organizations have become effective in addressing complex policies, working with multiple layers of constituents and legislators and forming strong alliances with organizations, businesses and health care providers," said O'Bryon, who is  President and Chief Executive Officer of the Consumer Health Foundation of Washington, D.C.  "They play leading roles in defending programs threatened by cuts in state and federal budgets and in expanding access to care when fiscal times are good.  They are recognized as ‘players’ and sought out for negotiations with state officials about health care.”

Langston joined the Public Welfare Foundation in 1987.  Since 1992, the Foundation’s Health Reform Program under her leadership has made more than $25 million in grants to local, state and national advocacy organizations in 35 states, creating a nationwide network of advocates working together to foster a national solution to the American health care crisis.

The award, established in 1993, is named for Terrence Keenan, who spent four decades in health philanthropy and who was known for nurturing fledgling groups and for championing new (and sometimes controversial)  ideas that would eventually become mainstream practice.  It is awarded annually to encourage and reward grantmaking distinguished by “leadership, innovation, and achievement.”  Langston will receive the award at the Grantmakers in Health 2008 Annual Meeting on Health Philanthropy scheduled to take place in Los Angeles on February 28, 2008.