As Director of the Innovations for the Underserved Program for the California HealthCare Foundation (CHCF), Margaret Laws oversees the CHCF program-related mission investing initiative. For example, CHCF funded a demonstration project that used text messaging to keep...

It was 1999, and I was speaking at a prestigious academic center’s ‘Innovations in Dermatology’ symposium.  I presented work we had done on a web application that would allow a non-dermatologist (primary care doctor or other front-line provider) to upload images of a...

Health-care foundations in the Bay Area and elsewhere are increasingly turning to “impact investing” — plowing money into for-profit companies, seeking a financial as well as a social return. Oakland’s California HealthCare Foundation started with a $10 million fund...

Foundations are backing makers of products and services for the poor (Illustrations by 731) Bay Area dermatologist David Wong can’t forget a patient he met during a trip to California’s Central Valley in 2009: a farmworker with a bleeding lesion on his right forearm...

In her former role as director of the Innovations for the Underserved program for the California HealthCare Foundation (CHCF), Margaret Laws oversaw the organization’s program-related investing initiative.   Q: How did mission investing get started at your...

Other sectors of health care innovation may be falling behind digital health. Underwhelming numbers showing health care’s share of venture capital funds have many people painting a grim picture of the future of health care innovation. But while there are clear...