The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust provides funding for innovative projects that use information technologies to connect rural patients to specialty medical care, provides the latest medical therapies and facilitates programs for underserved populations that place particular stress on existing health care facilities and local governments.

In April, 2010 the Helmsley Charitable Trust awarded the American Heart Association an $8.4 million grant to build a STEMI system of care in the state of South Dakota.  The Mission: Lifeline funding is part of the Helmsley Rural Health Program which over the last two years awarded a total of more than $13 million in grants to institutions and organizations in the upper Midwest.