SPONSORED CONTENT: The Harrisburg region is a wonderful place to live and work, and Capital Blue Cross is proud to be a part of the region’s ongoing growth and success. We started in Harrisburg more than 85 years ago, and we continue to proudly call this area our home.
Central Pennsylvania, like so many areas of the country, struggles to ensure everyone has access to quality, affordable healthcare that can help them enjoy fulfilling, productive lives. Disparities in health equity, regardless of the cause, can hamper the quality of life not just for individuals, but for 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 wellness in the Harrisburg region.
A perfect example is our intensified health equity efforts, which help ensure affordable, quality care is accessible to all who need it. Together with our likeminded community partners, we’ve helped fund numerous health equity-focused initiatives in and around Harrisburg, including:
- The WellSpan Mobile Mammography Coach, which provides essential breast cancer screenings to uninsured and underinsured women across six area counties regardless of their ability to pay.
- Healthy Harrisburg, piloted by the UPMC Pinnacle Foundation, which provides resources to help UPMC’s most vulnerable patients.
- Mission of Mercy, which helps the underinsured and uninsured access essential medical care.
- Alder Health Services, which strives to improve the health and well-being of the area’s LGBTQ+ communities and individuals living with HIV/AIDS.
- Harrisburg Area Community College’s dental program, which provides affordable, accessible care to those who might otherwise struggle to find it.
Again, we back these varied and vital initiatives because we believe that closing gaps in care—and opening doors to affordable, accessible, quality healthcare—is critical to Capital’s core mission. But health equity isn’t the only area we support as we march toward that goal; Capital also helps fund essential regional programs that bolster basic human needs and services, as well as education, culture and the arts.
Capital’s contributions to important regional causes aren’t just financial. We also give ourselves—our energy, our passion, our talent and our time. We do it through a robust Capital Blue Cross Employee Volunteer Program that last year saw 386 Capital employees log 8,765 hours of volunteer community service. To put that in context, an entire calendar year has 8,760 hours, meaning our employees gave a full year’s worth of time towards causes they care about.
Our employees take part in multiple community donation drives and fundraiser events that Capital hosts throughout the year. Chief among those is our annual support of United Way of the Capital Region (UWCR). For three years running, Capital’s campaign to help the United Way has raised more than $500,000 a year to support vital programs and services, helping empower area individuals and families to achieve self-sufficiency.
Whether it’s donating millions of our dollars over the years to critical health or life-quality programs or donating 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’ll continue to do our part by going that extra mile every day to help our area grow, prosper, and meet its enormous potential.
Todd Shamash is president and CEO of Capital Blue Cross.
For more information, visit www.capbluecross.com.
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