MaineGeneral receives $40M endowment from Peter Alfond Foundation

Courtesy / MaineGeneral Health Chuck Hays, president and CEO of MaineGeneral Health, on Wednesday announces the $40 million endowment from the Peter Alfond Foundation.

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By Staff

MaineGeneral Health, the Augusta-based health care system that includes 192-bed MaineGeneral Medical Center, has received a $40 million endowment gift from the Peter Alfond Foundation to expand preventive and community health services.

The foundation also donated $8 million to fund wellness staff positions at the Alfond Youth & Community Center in Waterville, according to a news release Wednesday.

“With this investment, we will continue to break down barriers to care and wellness services to better address the health of community members. This requires us to provide tools and services where people live, work and play," said MaineGeneral Health President and CEO Chuck Hays.

Alfond, who died in 2017, served for nearly a decade on the MaineGeneral Health board of directors. He invested in what became the teaching kitchen and cafeteria in the Alfond Center for Health, and helped create a variety of community-accessible health services.

Hays noted the funding comes at a critical time for the health care system.

“COVID-19 has dealt a severe negative financial blow to all health care organizations, requiring hard decisions,” he said. “Maintaining funding for community health is always a challenge. This gift allows us not only to continue but to expand our prevention and healthy living programming as we focus operational dollars on COVID-19 recovery and disease-specific health care needs.”

The endowment will expand the reach of MaineGeneral’s existing but now renamed Peter Alfond Prevention & Healthy Living Center; enhance access to teaching kitchens, including work with community partners; and expand community health outreach through a team of community health workers. It will also help the hospital system evaluate personal-and-public health programming.

In the release, Peter Alfond’s children said, “It was our father’s sincere desire to improve the quality of life of those living in the Kennebec Valley. The Peter Alfond Prevention & Healthy Living Center is the result of his vast knowledge of wellness, his entrepreneurial spirit and his relentless philanthropic zest. This gift represents a final manifestation of our father’s vision of a sustainable solution to improving one’s quality of life through a multi-faceted approach.”