We provide grants to improve the health and well-being of vulnerable New Yorkers, bolster the health outcomes of diverse communities, eliminate barriers to care, and bridge gaps in health services.
We seek to promote, sponsor, and support activities, programs, and initiatives that enhance access to affordable quality healthcare and healthcare-related services and address the unmet healthcare and healthcare-related needs of communities across New York State. This includes the social determinants of health, consistent with the ethical principles, tenets, and teachings of the Roman Catholic faith. Our Foundation will exist in perpetuity, helping generations of New Yorkers of all faiths or no faith at all.
The Mother Cabrini Health Foundation is one of the largest foundations in the United States and the largest foundation focused exclusively on New York State.
It originated from the 2018 sale of Fidelis Care, a nonprofit health insurer started and operated by the bishops of the Catholic dioceses of New York. Over more than 20 years, Fidelis Care under the oversight of the bishops grew to become one of the highest-rated, most successful insurers operating in New York State and created the opportunity for the Mother Cabrini Health Foundation to continue to address health disparities.
It represents Mother Cabrini’s love of violets.
As a young girl in Italy, our Foundation’s namesake constructed paper boats and filled each with violets, imagining each to be a missionary on a quest to embrace humanity with unconditional love… the same love of humanity that today guides our grantmaking. Our logo’s symbolic elements are modeled after the gold emblem for the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Roman Catholic religious congregation Mother Cabrini founded in 1880.
The symbolic elements include the Sacred Heart, a star, a missionary’s boat, and water representing the great seas traveled, as well as New York’s mighty Hudson River.
St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, known and loved by many as Mother Cabrini, arrived in New York in 1889 on a mission to help immigrants. She dedicated her life to providing for those most in need. As the first American saint, she serves as a powerful example of the Catholic values and principles that ground our work.
As an immigrant herself, Mother Cabrini knew the importance of providing for the most vulnerable in our community. Our Foundation is working to build on her legacy of service. In 2020, Governor Andrew Cuomo dedicated a statue in her honor in Battery Park City, and New York State posted this educational website with more details about her life.
Another great resource for learning about Mother Cabrini’s life and work is the Cabrini Shrine in Northern Manhattan.
Posted at the top of this page is a photo from our office in New York City, where we are always reminded of the spirit and presence of Mother Cabrini!
Our top-tier leadership team drives the impactful work that the Mother Cabrini Health Foundation supports across New York State. Tasked with fulfilling a public mandate to reduce health disparities and honor the Foundation’s namesake, we seek to tangibly improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers in need.”
— Al Kelly, chair of the board of directors and chief executive officer, VISA.