Milbank Memorial Fund

The Milbank Memorial Fund, established and endowed by Elizabeth Milbank Anderson in 1905, has focused its activities in the field of public health. The fund has had a significant impact in promoting reform in the organization and delivery of health care.

The Milbank Memorial Fund, established and endowed by Elizabeth Milbank Anderson in 1905, has focused its activities in the field of public health. The fund has had a significant impact in promoting reform in the organization and delivery of health care.

The Milbank Memorial Fund was established and endowed by Elizabeth Milbank Anderson as a memorial to her parents, Jeremiah and Elizabeth Lake Milbank. Incorporated in New York on April 3, 1905, as the Memorial Fund Association, the organization was chartered "to improve the physical, mental and moral condition of humanity and generally to advance charitable and benevolent objects." The organization's name was changed to the Milbank Memorial Fund in 1921.

The Milbank Memorial Fund has focused its activities in the field of public health, and has had a significant impact in promoting reform in the organization and delivery of health care. Historically the Milbank Fund has operated by identifying and concentrating on successive problem areas in public health. As alternative funding has become available to support work in a given area, the organization has moved on to a new emphasis. In the early 1920's the fund devoted most of its resources to medical care and health delivery systems, funding several health demonstration projects in urban and rural areas of New York State. In 1928 it began studying the relationship between population problems and public health, and it continued to support demographic research for four decades, longer than any other program.

In the 1930's attention was turned to nutrition and the hygiene of housing. In the 1940's and 1950's the Milbank Fund's program expanded to include the epidemiology of chronic disease and especially the development and appraisal of mental health services. In the 1960's the organization focused on promoting the development throughout the western hemisphere of young medical educators in the areas of social and preventive medicine. During the 1970's the fund shifted emphasis to health services consumerism and to the acquisition and application of knowledge about more effective utilization of health services.

For additional information on the Milbank Memorial Fund, see Series II, BIOGRAPHICAL AND HISTORICAL RECORDS.