In 2016, leaders of the Hektoen Institute of Medicine, the Institute of Medicine of Chicago, the Michael Reese Research & Education Foundation, the Portes Foundation and the Public Health Institute of Metropolitan Chicago held a number of meetings to see if there were ways to do more to address areas of public health in metro Chicago beyond what their individual institutions were doing. Those meetings led to the formation of the Foxglove Alliance. Today, the Foxglove Alliance has evolved into a coalition of 15 (and growing) mostly not-for-profit organizations dedicated to improving public health in the Chicago metropolitan area through collaborations to develop new initiatives and programs, convene networking & educational events, engage in issue identification/resolution and conduct outreach and public awareness activities utilizing the resources of the members and a host of NGOs, individuals and strategic public and private sector partners
WHY FOXGLOVE?
The Foxglove is a tall Eurasian plant with spikes of flowers that are typically pinkish-purple or white. The irony is that this plant can be both poisonous (even deadly if swallowed) and medicinal (as the source of the drug digitalis).