The significance of the Milbank Memorial Fund for policy: an assessment at its centennial.

In 1935, when medical societies across the United States were complaining that the Milbank Memorial Fund endorsed health insurance mandated and subsidized by government, Albert G. Milbank, president of its board, accorded priority to protecting the Fund’s “reputation and its personality” (Kingsbury 1935a). This article, on the occasion of the Fund’s centennial, describes how its personality, expressed in the values, priorities, and methods of its leaders, influenced its reputation among persons who made, implemented, and studied the results of health policy. Its theme is that the Fund has been most effective when it has been a broker of practical knowledge about policy for preventing and treating illness, organizing and financing health and related services, and protecting and enhancing the health of populations. The Fund has been consistent in its goals, and in how its board and staff implemented them, for most of its history. Elizabeth Milbank Anderson, who donated its endowment between 1905 and 1920, described four goals in 1913 when she announced an initiative by the Fund and New York City’s then leading social welfare organization to improve policy and practice aimed at the health and social welfare of the poor. The first goal was “fostering preventive and constructive social measures for