Inspira launches $28 million campaign to boost South Jersey health care

For Cumberland County patients, the question is not how much Inspira can raise. It is whether the health system can turn a $28 million campaign into faster care, stronger behavioral health services and more help with the daily barriers that keep people from getting well.

The Inspira Health Foundation launched the public phase of its Changing Lives, Improving Communities Capital Campaign after a kickoff event June 9 at Inspira Medical Center Mullica Hill, with the public phase opening June 10. Inspira says the money is meant to support healthier communities across Cumberland, Gloucester and Salem counties, with priorities that include behavioral health services, community health and access, oncology care, and parent and child services.

That focus matters in Cumberland County because the campaign is tied to the problems Inspira says residents have already identified. Its 2025-2027 Community Health Needs Assessment, released April 30, 2025 with the Walter Rand Institute for Public Affairs at Rutgers University-Camden, covers Cumberland, Gloucester and Salem counties and was built from surveys, focus groups and key informant interviews. Inspira says the assessment found food access was a major challenge for thousands of residents across the three-county region.

The system has already pointed to one concrete response: Food Farmacy+ locations at health centers in Bridgeton and Woodbury, created with the Food Bank of South Jersey and the Community FoodBank of New Jersey. That program gives the campaign a visible local benchmark. If the fundraising drive is serious about community health, Cumberland County residents will be looking for more of that kind of practical investment, not just a larger balance sheet.

Inspira also says the campaign addresses social factors that shape health long before anyone reaches an exam room, including access to nutritious food, safe housing and reliable transportation. The foundation says it is expanding behavioral health services, crisis intervention and community outreach, a sign that the campaign is meant to build capacity rather than pay for a one-time improvement. For communities in Vineland, Millville and Bridgeton, that could mean better access to care that is closer to home and less dependent on long travel or delayed appointments.

The campaign fits a longer pattern for Inspira. In 2019, the system said more than $17 million had been pledged toward a $20 million goal for the Mullica Hill hospital project under its earlier Invest. Impact. Inspire. campaign. Kevin Gibala, the foundation board chair, is the public face of the new effort. For Cumberland County, the measure of success will be simple: more services, more access and clearer evidence that the county’s needs are being met where they are most urgent.