Who we are
We’re an independent foundation. We invest in a healthier society, backing people and ideas to drive more equitable health. We know that people’s ability to stay healthy is not equal. A range of things affect it: from the genes we are born with, to where we grow up, live and work, to our access to quality healthcare.
This is why our mission to build a society that helps everyone stay healthier for longer requires a diversity of approaches and perspectives:
- As a funder, and influencer, collaborating with a wide range of multi-sector partners to unlock the potential of cities to be healthier;
- As the three NHS charities supporting Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, helping to deliver better, fairer healthcare, beyond what the NHS can provide;
- As an investor, setting our endowment a dual mandate of financial returns and positive impacts in health, society and environment.
Changing systems to make them healthier is difficult. We cannot achieve it alone; we must work with others. So we collaborate with people and organisations in urban areas, NHS patients and staff, businesses, and national, regional and local governments. We believe that with the right partnerships, insights and values, we can achieve ambitious goals.
Our activities:
Impact on Urban Health
Through our Impact on Urban Health programmatic funding, we seek to focus on a few complex health issues that disproportionately affect people living in urban areas. We fund and collaborate with partners – from residents to businesses, councils to community organisers – to build health equity for people in Lambeth and Southwark, our home boroughs, and beyond.
Health effects of air pollution programme: Air pollution causes up to 43,000 premature deaths every year in the UK. Our health effects of air pollution programme finds equitable solutions to poor air quality in urban areas.
In the 2024/25 financial year we invested c.£4m in this area of work, including support the Ella Roberta Family Foundation’s campaign against air pollution’s disproportionate effects on racialised communities and funding LIVE+BREATH, a collective of creatives and community groups to amplify voices often not heard on this issue.
Financial foundations for adult health programme: Everybody should have the financial security needed for good mental and physical health. However, the preventable mortality rate in the most deprived areas is more than twice as high as in the least deprived areas.
In the 2024/25 financial year we invested c.£4m in this area of work, including funding the Enterprise Hub, a new local entrepreneurship initiative based in Elephant and Castle, in partnership with Trampoline New Horizon CIC and Southwark Council, providing affordable co-working space, and launching the ‘Supporting Households in Energy Debt’ report, which outlines seven recommendations for how Ofgem, Government and the energy sector can improve support for households in energy debt.
Children’s mental health programme: Every child should have access to the things needed to be healthy, feel safe and reach their potential.
Millions of children and their families are trapped in poverty, causing significant harm to their mental health. In the last financial year we invested c.£3m in this programme, including increasing access to culturally sensitive mental health and wellbeing support for children and facilities through partnerships with Class 13, Partisan and Rekindle and funding the scaling up of the Old Kent Road Family Zone.
Children’s health and food programme: All children and young people have the right to access enough nutritious food as they grow up, no matter where they live or what family they come from.
Working in partnership, we focus on improving the accessibility of affordable, nutritious and culturally appropriate food for children and families in the places where they spend their time. We invested £4m in this area in 2024/25 including launching the ‘Commercial Break’ campaign with Bite Back. Sixty million outdoor advert impressions for high fat sugar salt products in Lambeth and Southwark were replaced with the message “We’ve bought this ad space so the junk food giants couldn’t – we’re giving kids a commercial break” and establishing the Early Years Food Coalition to push for a better nutritional offer in early years settings.
Our charities
Through our support for Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, delivered through our three charities (Guy’s & St Thomas’ Charity, Evelina London Children’s Charity and Guy’s Cancer Charity) we seek enable the Trust to deliver exceptional NHS healthcare. During 2024/25, we committed to fund long-term projects with a value of £20.6m. And, thanks to our incredible supporters, this year our family of charities fundraised a total of £6.0m.
We have match funded a groundbreaking £20m government-funded AI research project called PharosAI. This will transform cancer care by unlocking decades of NHS cancer data and hosting it on one powerful, secure, AI-ready platform; invested in a project to promote international best practice in medical care; and funded a specialist training programme to help the everyday heroes at Evelina London understand how trauma, including violence and racism, affects families from the Global Majority and low-income households.
Our endowment
Our endowment is one of our most powerful tools, operating under a dual mandate of achieving financial returns and mission-aligned outcomes. We invest our assets in line with our dual mandate, and use our investor voice through active stewardship activities, including Working alongside other investors to secure a commitment from Nestlé to adopt an innovative average nutrient profile score for its portfolio (weighted by sales amount).