To support efforts to flatten the curve and slow the spread of COVID-19 in Western North Carolina, Dogwood Health Trust is partnering with multiple rural county health departments throughout the 18-county and Qualla Boundary to increase access to COVID-19 testing specifically to support contact tracing efforts. Dogwood has been working for weeks to source test kits from private labs to support health department efforts in rural areas of the region. 

The Board of Directors for Dogwood Health Trust recently approved the allocation of $10 million to address COVID-19 needs throughout the 18 county and Qualla boundary region of Western North Carolina.

In a Zoom call Wednesday, Dogwood Health Trust CEO Antony Chiang announced the foundation has committed $10 million to spend on responding to the COVID-19 pandemic that has now hit Western North Carolina. 

How can $1.5 billion transform the health and wellness of Western North Carolina communities for decades to come? That’s the question Dogwood Health Trust’s Board of Directors is currently asking itself since the new foundation was tasked with spending the proceeds from Mission Health’s sale to HCA Healthcare last year. 

Following HCA Healthcare’s purchase of the Mission Health System, the nonprofit foundations that have supported Mission’s hospitals for so long had the choice to dissolve or find a new mission. 

As all of Mission’s legacy foundations establish their new mission and board of directors, Dogwood Health Trust is in the process of looking for the right person to lead the new private charity foundation.  

With the completion of Mission Health System’s sale of assets to HCA Healthcare, Dogwood Health Trust is now officially operating as a private, nonprofit foundation with the purpose of dramatically improving the health and wellbeing of all people and communities in Western North Carolina.

Those who were unhappy with the original terms of the proposed sale of Mission Health to a for-profit heathcare giant got some relief last week.