EAST LANSING – Rob Fowler, the chair of the Health Endowment Fund Board created with the conversion of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan into a nonprofit mutual company, said Tuesday the board would likely spend the first half of 2014 working to understand its role and would be ready to start allocating funds in the fall.

The board held its first meeting on Tuesday, where it elected officers and adopted bylaws and conflict of interest documents. Its primary responsibility, though, will be to reward grants from the fund set to receive $1.56 billion from Blue Cross during the next 18 years.

The first installment of money to the fund will come in April, Fowler said, but the board must determine the criteria and circumstances under which it will give grants first.

“I think there will be expectation that in this year we will begin making grants and I would think that’s a reasonable expectation,” said Fowler, president and CEO of the Small Business Association of Michigan. “It’s hard to know at this point exactly, but I would guess in the fall we would at least be ready to understand the criteria, to understand the circumstances.”

He continued: “Only in health care is this not a lot of money. You know, it’s a billion and a half dollars, but there’s so much demand in health care that I could really see having not enough money to satisfy the demand many times over.”

Department of Community Health Director James Haveman said at the start of the meeting that although all on the board have solid and successful careers, the endowment fund is something they will look back on proudly.

“You’re going to be talking about nutrition, about infant mortality, about transportation,” Haveman said of the board. “You’re going to be talking about things that are important to the Department of Community Health, but also important to the future of this state and the health of this state. This is something that it’s a real honor to be appointed to, by the governor, by the various people in the Legislature who appointed you. I just want you to feel the uniqueness of what this is all about.”

Fowler was voted chair; Lynn Alexander, vice president of public affairs for Presbyterian Villages of Michigan, was voted vice chair; Tim Damschroder, who heads the Business Practice Group at the Bodman PLC law firm, was voted treasurer; and Cindy Estrada, vice president of the United Auto Workers, was voted secretary.

The board will meet again in early February, but Fowler told board members to begin deciding who they would like to hear from to lay a foundation before then. He said a presentation on the statute creating the board and what its role should be are likely topics. Members also had ideas to create a subcommittee of sorts comprised of medical professionals and research people so they can better understand the issues being addressed by future grant proposals and rewards.

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