One program will make it easier for people to get fast medical care on evenings and weekends. Another will help doctors push their patients toward healthy living. Still another will tell Spanish-speaking people where to find care when they have no health insurance.

Those are among the eight new initiatives financed by $1.6 million in grants that the Rhode Island Foundation announces Tuesday.

The grants result from an unusual settlement in 2007 between Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island and the U.S. Attorney’s office, in which Blue Cross avoided corruption charges by donating a $20-million endowment to the foundation.

The grants, ranging from $35,000 to $750,000 for one to three years, are the first awards from the endowment, named the Fund for a Healthy Rhode Island. The foundation has decided to spend income from the endowment on boosting access to primary care.

“We’re not funding the same old programs,” said Neil Steinberg, the foundation’s president and chief executive officer. “This is new thinking and innovative thinking and innovative implementation. We will be closely tracking the impact.”

The foundation received 47 applications for grants from the Fund for a Healthy Rhode Island, and it selected the winners based on how many people the proposal would benefit, the agency’s ability to carry it out, and whether collaboration among groups was involved, Steinberg said. The projects include expansions at community health centers, help with asthma medications and a consumer guide to primary care.

The largest grant, $750,000 over three years, goes to a project called Rapid Access Rhode Island. The money will establish a walk-in clinic where people can go when they get sick on weekends and after doctor’s office hours. It will also have mental-health professionals on site, merging care for mental and physical illnesses. Rapid Access Rhode Island is a collaboration of the Providence Community Health Centers, Blackstone Valley Community Health Care, and the Providence Center, a mental health agency.

Merrill Thomas, CEO of the Providence Community Health Centers, said that the grant will allow the health centers, starting in the fall, to extend clinic hours to 8 p.m. on Monday through Thursday and to open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Sunday. Patients can walk in or call ahead to make an appointment.

The extended hours will be available for clinic patients and anyone else as well, and could provide an alternative to the emergency room. Those who have a doctor will be referred back to that person after getting care, and those who don’t have a doctor will be connected with one. Thomas said that the care will be for “earaches and stomachaches, temperatures and fevers,” not traumatic injuries, heart attacks or other calamities best treated in the emergency room.

Another grant, of $250,000 over three years, goes to Shape Up Rhode Island, a program through which people work in teams toward fitness or weight-loss goals. The grant will enable Shape Up, working with the Rhode Island State Nurses Association and the Rhode Island Primary Care Physicians Corporation, to help primary-care physicians encourage patients to exercise and eat healthfully.

Shape Up is creating a brochure and “faux prescription pad” on which doctors can prescribe healthy living to patients, because “doctor’s orders” can be a powerful motivator. The brochure will inform patients about Shape Up and other community wellness resources. When a doctor refers a patient to Shape Up, the agency will follow up with the patient and also will tell the doctor whether the person signed up. The goal is to recruit an additional 4,000 participants to Shape Up in the project’s first year.

Another grant recipient is Latino Public Radio, which received $51,000 for one year to develop a Spanish-language radio show to tell Latinos with no health insurance where they can get care, such as the health centers and the Rhode Island Free Clinic. The percentage of uninsured people is higher among Latinos than other ethnic groups, said Dr. Pablo Rodriguez, president of Latino Public Radio.

The grants result from an old scandal. Blue Cross had been accused by federal authorities of making payments to three lawmakers who had the power to influence legislation affecting the insurer –– John Celona, former Senate Corporations Committee chairman; Gerald Martineau, former House majority leader, and William V. Irons, former Senate president. As part of the settlement in late 2007, the company agreed to take responsibility for its former executives’ actions, to improve corporate ethics and to establish the $20-million endowment.

The agreement said that the endowment should support “projects which are designed and intended to have the greatest impact of the provision of quality and affordable health-care services in Rhode Island” but otherwise gave the Rhode Island Foundation “sole and absolute discretion” in deciding how to spend its earnings.

The foundation hired a consultant and interviewed health-care leaders across the state before announcing in January that grants would be awarded to boost primary care. It sought applications for projects that would make primary care more accessible for working families, make medications affordable, or promote disease prevention.

In addition to the grant program, the foundation plans to use some of the money to establish a loan-forgiveness program to help pay off the education debts of primary-care providers. That program is still being developed.

ffreyer@projo.com