Last week, we welcomed community members, partners, public health advocates and more to HealthRise 2026 for an evening of celebration, acceleration and mobilization.
HealthRise marks several milestones for the Kansas Health Foundation. We celebrate the progress we’ve made. We call on Kansans to accelerate action on the work ahead of us. And we begin mobilizing our network to address our next major health challenge.
Another key objective of this year’s event was to share how we approach our work to address major health challenges in Kansas and ultimately climb America’s Health Rankings to lead the nation in Health.
We call this approach our Arc of Work.
The Arc is a system that allows us to learn, practice, iterate and continuously move forward on these challenges.
It starts with exploration, asking which of the more than 50 measures outlined in America’s Health Rankings we should address next. Once a measure is chosen, a surge of work begins—a three-year process that starts with listening and data collection and continues to the creation and activation of a Blueprint for collective action. Every year, a new surge of work begins.
We introduced the Arc at HealthRise 2026 so attendees could imagine how they could connect to it, help us with it and coach us to make it better.
Celebrating Progress
Hunger Free Kansas
Our first major health challenge to go through the Arc was food insecurity.
Over the past three years, Hunger Free Kansas has been a program and an initiative of the Kansas Health Foundation. In August, they completed our Arc of Work to begin their own as a standalone, statewide nonprofit organization charged with carrying the Blueprint for a Hunger-Free Kansas forward.
“Our job is to connect people and ideas, bring partners together and help good work move further, faster.”
– Erika Debrick Kelly, CEO, Hunger Free Kansas
At HealthRise, we celebrated Hunger Free Kansas’s progress and shared their first report on a year of sustained action.
Download the Hunger Free Kansas Blueprint Progress Report
Kanbe’s Markets
We also celebrated the meaningful progress of one of our first Transformation Grant Program grantees.
Kanbe’s Markets, led by Founder & CEO Max Kaniger, brought its innovative zero-waste food distribution model from Missouri to Kansas, specifically to Wyandotte County, which is one of the most food-insecure counties in the state. Thanks in part to the Transformation Grant Program, Kanbe’s Markets has grown from one pickup truck and one store to a team of 45 delivering to 130 stores and 60 hunger relief partners, moving 3 million pounds of food each year.
“Our mission is to build a more equitable food system by turning excess into access.”
– Max Kaniger, Founder & CEO, Kanbe’s Markets
Accelerating Action
Upward Mobility
The Transformation Grant Program continued this year for Upward Mobility, our second major health challenge.
After creating the Blueprint for Upward Mobility at FuseKS, we asked Kansas nonprofits and community organizations to propose innovative ideas to bring the strategies outlined in the Blueprint to life. More than 100 applications from Kansans across the state poured in.
“We were blown away. There’s tremendous energy in this state to make progress on this issue.”
– Lindsay Wilke, Associate Director of Network Mobilization, Kansas Health Foundation
In collaboration with the Hall Family Foundation and the Patterson Family Foundation, Kansas Health Foundation turned our $3.1 million of grant funding into $5.3 million to fund 19 of those applications, but we know we can’t solve this challenge without more people finding their place in this work.
Alongside the Kansas Leadership Center, we’re also accepting applications for the Upward Mobility Mass Action Mini-Grant Program for grants of up to $10,000 to activate even more of the Blueprint.
Apply for a mini-grant by noon September 29
Mobilizing Change
Cost of Care
Our next major health challenge is Cost of Care, and it’s just beginning its journey along the Arc.
According to the most recent America’s Health Rankings, more than one in 10 Kansans have postponed mental or physical health care in the past year because they couldn’t afford it. Sometimes, the cost of a doctor’s visit, medication or dental care was just too high. Other times, it was the challenge of arranging childcare, taking time off work or navigating a complicated system.
In the initial stages of the Arc, we’re collecting data, exploring and listening to the ideas and lived experience of Kansans through a statewide crowdsourcing effort, asking:
Have you or someone you know put off medical care because of cost? What happened? What would have helped?
At HealthRise 2026, we asked attendees to share their own ideas and story, and that’s what we’re asking of you, too.
Submit your idea for Cost of Care
The experiences and ideas we collect through this effort will be used to develop the strategies in a Blueprint for Cost of Care at FuseKS 2027.
The people and organizations represented at HealthRise 2026 are working hard to improve the health of our state, and so many more across Kansas are doing the same. We’re inviting all of them to join us in our Arc of Work and continue the momentum of the past three years.
“If we work together, we get better outcomes. Thank you for being part of this journey.”
– Ed O’Malley, President & CEO, Kansas Health Foundation