Michael Reese Hospital and Medical Center—a civic and philanthropic enterprise of Chicago’s Jewish community that had served the city for 110 years—and its Michael Reese Health Plan are sold to Humana.

Michael Reese Health Trust, under the leadership of founding president Dorothy H. Gardner, is established as a private, independent conversion foundation endowed with funds from Michael Reese Hospital Foundation, Michael Reese Health Plan Foundation, and Michael Reese Second Century Foundation.

The new foundation’s values mirror those of the hospital for which it is named. Its founding board adopts the World Health Organization’s definition of health: “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” For Michael Reese, supporting health will mean supporting both medical care and, in the words of the WHO constitution, improvements in “housing, sanitation, recreation, economic or working conditions and other aspects of environmental hygiene.”