Improving access to basic health care is the linchpin in The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s (RWJF’s) grant-making strategy for the 1990s. This goal of assuring access to care for all Americans is one of three new program goals set forth last year by the f o u n d atio n’ s p r e s id en t, Steven A. Schroeder. To address the problem, the foundation has decided to zero in on what it sees as the three barriers to access: financing, supply and distribution, and organizational/ sociocultural factors. Schroeder’s objectives for the foundation regarding access are ambitious. “The first thing I’d like to see accomplished is that [access] become a major policy issue,” he said. To do so, he said, necessary ingredients are accurate data and well-focused programs. “More fundamentally, we have to try to help the nation come to grips [with the fact] that this is a problem that we can do something about,” he explained in an interview at his Princeton, New Jersey, office. The foundation’s leadership role is important, Schroeder believes. RWJF plans to focus on the uninsured, the underinsured, and the inadequacies of the public and private health insurance system. He wants RWJF to look at such national trends as how well Americans are achieving access to basic health care. RWJF Vice-President Ruby Heam, who has been on staff for sixteen years, chairs the foundation’s Access Goal Development Work Group. She said that this internal panel helps with program strategy and development and defined the main barriers to access that the foundation is addressing.