The History of AHIMA Foundation
The AHIMA Foundation was originally founded in 1962 as the Foundation of Record Education or FORE. Originally, FORE provided a vehicle for individuals and organizations to donate books to AHIMA. With the assistance of FORE, the HIM resource collection of books, journals and other publications grew, so in 1965, the FORE Library was founded. In addition to maintaining and growing the library, the Foundation also provided loans to HIM students, ensuring the next generation of highly trained professionals.
As the HIM community grew, in 1991 FORE responded to the needs of the professionals in the industry by establishing the Merit Scholarship Program.
The industry continued to evolve and concordant with this evolution, so did the AHIMA Foundation. The Foundation began to fund research, discovering best practices and ensuring policy reflected the latest research findings. To represent the ever-expanding role of the Foundation in the advancement of HIM, in 1996, FORE become the Foundation of Research and Education. At this time, FORE established itself as a fully self-sufficient Foundation to attract individual and corporate support, with a mission to offer more scholarships, fund research projects and expand the Library's collection. In this same year, FORE began raising fund through the Not-So-Silent Auction and other fund-raising initiatives.
In 1997, the Foundation Board of Directors established the foundation as a separate entity of AHIMA.
To the present time, the Foundation has continued to respond to the needs of HIM professionals as well as be the premiere catalyst for industry advancement with a myriad of initiatives: in 1997, the FORE Triumph Awards were established; in 2001, FORE Library launched the ambitious online resource, the HIM Body of Knowledge (BoK); in 2004, FORE held the first annual Corporate Partner Industry Briefing, and in 2004, the FORE Faculty Stipends Program was initiated.
In 2009, the organization again to represent its ever-growing contributions to the HIM field; in that year, the AHIMA Foundation established with the vision of "Better health information for all."
Today, the AHIMA Foundation is working to be the pre-eminent foundation recognized for excellence in health information leadership, policy and research for the healthcare industry and the public. The Foundation operates under the values of philanthropy, innovation, leadership and integrity
We are entering a new era of HIM; where information will be digital, enterprise-wide and dynamic. The standard will be a new coding system, ICD-10, which offers more educational, research and policy opportunities. Further, the evolution and growth of PHR offers an opportunity to influence the healthcare consumer as well as general public. And throughout these changes, the AHIMA Foundation will be at the forefront, responding to the needs of the professionals we support, improving HIM for the community we serve, and realizing our vision of better healthcare for all.