Our History

The Greater San Antonio Healthcare Foundation (GSAHF) began its history of service to the community with its incorporation as a 501(c)3 in 1996. Over the years, the Foundation’s projects have included:

• The Nurse Faculty Funding Project, which initiated the funding of specific nursing faculty positions at the various local schools of nursing through donations exceeding $800,000. The Foundation’s success with the project had a significant impact on this community-wide problem.
• The Red Ribbon Celebration Week with the Air Force Band of the West was initiated to provide a drug awareness/prevention program coordinated with the San Antonio ISD, the Air Force Band of the West, area hospitals and Trinity University. An ensemble of the Band with music which youth from age 8-12 would identify played to over 4,000 school aged children at Laurie Auditorium at Trinity University during Red Ribbon Week each October.
• The File of Life program was implemented by the Foundation in a coordinative effort with the various emergency medical service agencies that provided the programmatic funds for direct expenses. The program’s purpose was to allow individual medical information to be readily available via a standardized, color- coded file which could be located in homes or automobiles. The program was well received by EMS groups throughout the region.

In 2008, the Foundation partnered with the Greater San Antonio Hospital Council, and area health systems and universities in a major initiative of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), South Texas Acts for Nursing Development (STAND). A major portion of the Foundation’s focus for the STAND project was to automate the clinical placement process, making blocks of available times and locations more visible for the community. Since the completion of STAND, the Foundation continues to function as a liaison and data clearing house for its partners the major universities and health systems in the San Antonio area to organize and process the data required to schedule nursing and allied health students into the on-site clinical rotations required to complete their various degree programs. Using an online clinical placement system developed specifically for this purpose, the Foundation completed approximately 4,000 placements for the 2011 school year. The Foundation functions as the hub of this consortium through its board of directors and steering committees for nursing and allied health.  The Foundation and its educational and clinical partners represent a coalition of dedicated professionals who work continually to increase student opportunities by maximizing clinical placements to help develop the next generations of the healthcare workforce.