Children’s Health

Healthy children, thriving communities

A children’s hospital atop a farmer’s market. A premier pediatric hospital and Level 1 trauma center. School-based services that keep the lights on for family health. A citywide prescription to address child poverty. These are several of the priorities at the core of the Mott Foundation’s grantmaking to strengthen children’s health in our hometown of Flint and beyond.

The well-being of children has been at the heart of Mott’s grantmaking since our earliest days. For nearly a century, Foundation leadership and support have focused on creating preventive health programs in schools, establishing state-of-the-art hospitals and developing responsive health systems.

It also has meant ramping up and sustaining support in critical times. Our grantees in Flint and around the globe have led efforts to respond to and help communities recover from crises, while addressing the root causes of child poverty, service gaps and environmental risks that impact children’s health.

The Foundation’s commitment to child health is anchored in our mission — to help promote a more just, equitable and sustainable society. It reflects C.S. Mott’s lifelong belief that health is essential to equal opportunity. In keeping with this legacy, we’ve strived both to directly advance child health and to invest in the constellation of services, systems and supports that give kids the strongest foundation for lifelong well-being.

Building blocks of children’s health in Flint

Many people in our home state of Michigan first hear the name Mott in connection with a hospital. But long before funding bricks and mortar, the Foundation began promoting children’s health with small, place-based grants designed to leverage existing buildings and services. The first of these was a 1935 grant for the Flint School Health Program.

In 1930s Flint, breakneck industrial and population growth had far outpaced the city’s capacity to provide basic public services. Both in and outside of the classroom, children faced multiple, intersecting health risks, and many were in dire need of medical and dental care.

The Flint Board of Education launched the Flint School Health Program in 1931. Beyond providing health education to Flint teachers, students and their families, the program — which was managed by the school district’s own health department — provided children with physical, hearing and eye exams, immunizations, vaccinations and access to dental care. But it was soon overwhelmed by unmet demand. In 1935, Mott approved a $6,000 grant to support and expand the program.

Within weeks of this health grant, Mott funding helped to launch a youth recreation program in Flint that evolved into the “lighted schoolhouse” model of community education that would keep schools open after hours for community life — and needed health services. Both grants reflected C.S. Mott’s belief that the best solutions leverage existing community resources and strengths.

In the late 1930s, the Foundation’s support for both the school health and community education programs helped to bring more neighborhood-based services to local children. A 1937 grant for the Mott Health Achievement Program for the Health Guarded Child helped all public and parochial schools in Flint access a tool to track health indicators, and to benchmark and promote children’s health.

In 1939, the Foundation supported the creation of Mott Children’s Health Center, which was initially housed within Flint’s Hurley Hospital — renamed Hurley Medical Center in 1975. Launched as part of the Mott Program of the Flint Board of Education, the children’s health center managed the Mott Health Achievement Program and delivered many of the health services provided in the schools. It also conducted physical examinations of Mott Camp participants and established partnerships with other local agencies, becoming a core part of Flint’s community education programming.

During this same period, the Foundation embarked on 33 years of support for the Kiwanis Club of Flint’s Health Camp Fund. Started in 1928 with the Genesee County Tuberculosis Association, the camp offered fresh air, nutritious food and medical care for children diagnosed with or exposed to tuberculosis. The camp closed in 1978, and the land on which it sat later became part of the county parks system.

In the mid-1940s, Mott Children’s Health Center began to offer clinical pediatric experience and scholarships to medical and dentistry students. This marked the beginning of more intensive Foundation efforts to strengthen child-centered care.

Promoting a new era of pediatric care

World War II fueled a surge in wartime and postwar industry, drawing new families to work in Flint’s factories. Housing shortages, as well as environmental, social and economic disparities, deepened the strain on families. Childhood illnesses — from polio and rheumatic fever to asthma and dental disease — were common. Care was limited, and many children were still treated in adult wards. Then came the baby boom.

It was clear that whole new systems were needed to meet maternal, family and children’s health needs.

Mott supported large-scale efforts to transform children’s health in Flint and elsewhere in Michigan. In the early 1960s, the Foundation provided funding for a new standalone home for Mott Children’s Health Center. The building, located adjacent to Hurley Hospital, opened in September 1962. In 1965, the Foundation provided a $500,000 grant to St. Luke’s Hospital in Marquette, Michigan, for the construction of a pediatrics floor.

During this same period, the Foundation committed support for a dedicated children’s hospital that could advance care for children throughout Michigan. The idea for such a facility took hold in 1956, when the Michigan Legislature appropriated $63,000 for planning. But it would be a decade before ground was broken, when C.S. Mott first pledged $6 million for the project, which was later followed by a grant increase of $500,000. The $6 million was the Foundation’s largest single grant at the time. The original grants leveraged federal funds, as well as more than $1 million in individual gifts and bequests — enough to complete the $9 million project.

The C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital at the University of Michigan opened its doors in 1969, coinciding with a burst of new pediatric medical knowledge. Being equipped with growing expertise and a modern facility enabled the university “not only to keep pace, but be a pacesetter,” said Robert Kelch, who would later serve as executive vice president for medical affairs and CEO for the U-M Health System.

Since the 1960s, the Foundation has supported additional construction and renovation projects for the hospital, such as a $25 million grant to U-M in 2005 to replace the original hospital and a $10 million grant in 2024 to renovate the NICU and pediatric cardiothoracic ICU. Today, the C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital is recognized as one of the finest children’s hospitals in Michigan and the country.

In early 2005, history came full circle when we made a $25 million grant to the U-M to replace the original C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital. It helped to launch a campaign to construct a facility that will ensure that children from Michigan, around the U.S. and even the globe have access to world-class medical treatment and care.”

William S. White, then Mott Foundation president and CEO, writing in our 2005 annual report

A community anchor for children’s wellness

Meanwhile, Hurley Medical Center — originally founded in 1908 by James J. Hurley — was building a transformational center for children’s health in Genesee County. By the 1970s, it had become one of the community’s principal inpatient pediatric services, and it faced an urgent need for expansion. With $1.9 million in grants, Mott joined other public and private sources to fund a $25 million pediatric modernization and expansion program. In 2001, Hurley Medical Center renovated its neonatal intensive care unit, with support, in part, from Mott.

Then the center opened a whole new chapter in children’s health. In 2014, with support from the Mott Foundation, the century-old Flint Farmer’s Market relocated to a former newspaper production facility downtown. The 32,000-square-foot building offered room for Hurley to relocate and combine its pediatric residency and specialty clinics, and in 2015 the Hurley Children’s Center opened its doors to the community. Aided by its location at the market, the center’s medical staff provide caregivers with “prescriptions” for the fresh, nutritious foods their children need, while the Mott-funded Double-Up Food Bucks program enables those receiving SNAP benefits to purchase twice the amount of healthy fare.

Strengthening children’s care outside the U.S.

Beyond grantmaking in the U.S., in special circumstances, Mott has joined efforts to strengthen children’s health in communities around the world. In the aftermath of the war in Bosnia, a 1996 delegation of the International Pediatric Association found no working incubators, resuscitators, respirators or piped oxygen in that country, and a sharp rise in premature births. Mott provided multiyear funding to the association to help support a training and exchange program for Bosnian pediatricians on the latest medical practices of neonatal care, especially for low birth-weight babies.

In the early 2000s, the Foundation joined many other funders to help build the Nelson Mandela Children’s Hospital, one of the only dedicated pediatric facilities in southern Africa. Located on the campus of Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg, the state-of-the-art hospital was completed in 2017 following a 10-year fundraising effort led by Nelson Mandela Children’s Hospital Trust. Mott contributed $150,000 to the feasibility and structural phases of work and provided a $1 million grant toward the successful $62 million campaign to launch and equip the facility. The light and bright center for children — which takes a broad view of health and healing — pays homage to Nelson Mandela’s values of love, care and service.

Recovery and renewal after crisis

Looking at children’s health holistically also has shaped our grantmaking in times of crises and recovery.

During the Flint water crisis, which began in 2014, children faced a population-wide exposure to lead. When Dr. Mona Hanna shared research showing that a change in Flint’s drinking water had caused children’s blood-lead levels to spike, Mott offered its immediate support. Within days, the Foundation provided a $4 million grant to help the city reconnect to the Detroit water system and provided $100,000 to purchase water filters for residents.

In 2016, Mott committed to grant up to $100 million over a five-year period to help Flint recover and rise from the water crisis. That grantmaking soon included $5 million for the Flint Child Health & Development Fund, which provided flexible resources to meet the medical and nutrition concerns and other needs of children exposed to lead in the water. We granted $5.5 million to Genesee Health System for the construction of a new purpose-built facility in Flint to house the organization’s child mental health and medical care programs. We also provided a total of nearly $14 million to expand access to high-quality early childhood education programming in the community, which takes a whole-child approach that includes a focus on health and well-being.

Addressing the physical and mental health needs of Flint kids, including those affected by the water crisis, remains a key focus of Michigan State University’s Charles Stewart Mott Department of Public Health. Located on the university’s College of Human Medicine campus in Flint, the department brings together physicians, researchers, residents and community advocates to meet both emerging and chronic community and child health needs. Building on earlier support, the Mott Foundation made a $25 million endowment grant in 2021 to help the department expand its efforts to advance public health in our hometown and beyond.

With support for Rx Kids, the Foundation helped MSU launch a unique citywide initiative that directly invests in Flint kids and families to help eliminate child poverty. Through Rx Kids, moms in Flint are “prescribed” a total of $7,500 in cash, including a one-time $1,500 payment in midpregnancy, followed by $500 per month for the first year of a child’s life.

Rx Kids launched with $15 million in challenge grants from Mott designed to encourage support for the full five-year project in Flint. That initial funding has since helped to leverage more than $200 million in additional state, federal and private support. The first citywide program of its kind in the U.S., the program now operates in 20 Michigan communities. Through November 2025, the program has given $12.6 million to 2,200 families in Flint and a total of $19.5 million to 4,602 families across the state.

Driven by our visionary Flint parents and children, Rx Kids is a much-needed infusion of joy, hope and opportunity for the entire city. Rx Kids is another example of Flint shining a spotlight on injustice and rolling up our sleeves to systemically build a better tomorrow not just for Flint kids — but for kids and communities everywhere.” Dr. Mona Hanna, who leads Rx Kids and directs the Pediatric Public Health Initiative, an innovative partnership of Michigan State University and Hurley Children’s Hospital in Flint