Purpose & Origin

Bringing to life our commitment to improving the health of underserved communities.

Middle aged black man working in barber shop
Our Mission

We foster a richly diverse collective of inspired minds and impassioned leaders, cultivating novel perspectives and ideas about the broad determinants of wellbeing in underserved populations to create a healthy, just world.

Foundation stats

Our overall reach and impact, at a glance.

7

Multi-year programs executed

130

Community focus group participants

780

Community outreach event participants

28

National thought-leaders guiding our work

11

Corporate sponsors engaged in our work

Happiness to be a father
Our Vision

We strive to be the nation’s leading incubator of health equity solutions.

Our Focus

We share a collective interest in understanding and eliminating the genetic, cultural, and social factors that drive disparities in the most widespread health conditions—such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, and diabetes—found in underserved Black, Hispanic/Latino, Asian/Pacific Islander, and Native American communities across the country.

Our Values

Treasure health.

We are passionate stewards of human health—working to achieve and protect it for people everywhere, so they can realize full lives.

Invite difference.

Our endless fascination with the diversity and richness of human biology, cultural behaviors, and lived experiences creates an inclusive perspective.

Listen hard.

Actively listening to people allows us to fully understand and value who they are, where they are coming from, and what they bring to the table.

Discover together.

By exploring issues and opportunities together we find better solutions and deepen our collective commitment to a common cause.

Work bravely.

Progress demands that we are unafraid to take on difficult situations and conversations and to navigate them with confidence, sincerity, and  delicacy.

Inspire good.

In celebrating every positive effort and result—and those behind it—we encourage a widening circle of people to join us in helping patients.

Make Well Known_03B web
Our Origin

Greater collaboration. Greater change.

We apply the Inside Edge relationship-based approach to address broad-based health equity challenges.

In 2016, after more than a decade of successful consulting engagements, the leaders of Inside Edge Consulting Group saw an opportunity to bring about even greater positive societal change through a sister philanthropic organization that could address broad health disparities beyond the scope of any one of their individual for-profit clients.

Inside Edge was founded in 2004 by Lionel Philips. His experiences both growing up in the Bronx in New York City and through a career as a pharmaceutical representative led him to create a firm that focused on forging deeper, richer connections between the two communities he had come to know so well—medical innovators and underserved populations. The Make Well Known Foundation has been built around the same relationship-based approach that has set Inside Edge apart, convening national and local experts to collaboratively solve health equity challenges. But as a 501(c)(3) organization, the Foundation was designed to enable a wide range of healthcare, government, and advocacy organizations to collectively guide important work to benefit their constituents.