Olivia Rodrigo's Festival Sent $2 Million To A Native American Health Organization That's Been Fighting For Indian Country For 35 Years!
Among the ten nonprofit organizations selected as partners for Olivia Rodrigo's Daisy Chain Fields Festival was the Johns Hopkins Center of Indigenous Health at the Bloomberg School of Public Health, one of the oldest and most influential Native American public health research and advocacy organizations in the United States. Founded in 1991, the Center has spent 35 years developing and promoting evidence-based public health initiatives across Indian Country, working on health equity issues that range from maternal health and mental health to environmental health and the chronic disease burden that disproportionately affects Native American communities. The Center received a $2 million grant from the festival's net proceeds, announced at a press conference in Los Angeles ahead of the August 29 event, where Melissa Wells, co-director of the Center for Indigenous Health, sat alongside Rodrigo as the donation was made public. The funds represent a significant injection of resources into an organization that has historically operated on academic institution funding and grants, and the Center stated the money would go toward its 35th anniversary vision: Thriving Indigenous Communities Worldwide.
The ten nonprofit partners were selected for their work addressing urgent issues affecting women and girls in the United States and globally, and the Center for Indigenous Health was chosen as the representative of Native American women's health specifically, a community whose health outcomes are among the most underserved and least funded in the American healthcare system. Native American women face maternal mortality rates significantly higher than the national average, have higher rates of unmet mental health needs, and live in communities where access to quality healthcare infrastructure is systematically inadequate. Rodrigo, who is of Filipino descent and has spoken publicly about her investment in equity and representation, said at the press conference that the organizations partnered with Daisy Chain Fields are doing incredibly important work every single day in the United States and globally, and that she was grateful to every person who bought a ticket, every artist who waived their fee, every sponsor who signed onto a brand new festival, and every donation that helped reach the ten million dollar goal. Melinda French Gates matched that total dollar for dollar, bringing the overall sum distributed among the ten partners to twenty million dollars. The Johns Hopkins Center of Indigenous Health's share is $2 million. Its 35th year is now also its most resourced.
