1Ravenswood Family Health Center

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Ravenswood Family

Health CenterRemembering the Past

Ravenswood Family Health Center has a distinct advantage when it comes to understanding the health

needs of the people it serves. Its staff and board are as diverse as the community. As an organization it’s a laboratory of democracy in action. 38% of its staff and 79% of the board are from the community.

Commitment = Staying Power: Recollections of Longest Serving Board Members

Manuel Arteaga recalls the early days: We’re a model for working with issues at the local level. The community is sitting here at the table. In the beginning we had a lot of challenges. We had to get to know each other and trust each other and we spent a lot of time talking about race and income and what side of 101 you lived on, what everybody’s agenda was. That was necessary at that point, but that feels like ancient history. We’ve grown so much, but

we had to go through that in order to build that community support, in order to have people from all these different groups trust each other and work well together.

Marceline Combs raised her family in East Palo Alto and remembers a simpler time. “We had all nationalities in our neighborhood. We never thought of people being Mexican or Hispanic. We were in Boy Scouts together in the Girl Scouts together, we were just a community.”

Julio Garcia, an immigrant from Guatemala is Ravenswood Board Chair. He sees Ravenswood as a melting pot. “It’s a mixture of cultures, It’s a mixture of ages; it’s a mixture of races.”

Melieni Talakai is a nurse and knows her people’s blind spots. “In my Pacific Islander community, health care for a lot of people is a mystery. It’s inaccessible; you just don’t go there unless you are almost dead. But that is changing. Now,

people are listening to health education, something that wasn’t so readily embraced before.”

Senseria Conley was one of the first patients when she was asked to sit on the board. “I was nervous because I’m hearing impaired and knew nothing about boards. But I stayed. It’s a tough job to understand the financial situation, the demographics, what patients needs are in the community. I’ve seen it evolve. We’ve done a tremendous job in making sure we got a dental clinic. I thought that was fantastic. Hallelujah!

All five original board members have served for 13 years or more.

Building for the Future

Back: Jonathan Lindeke, Julio Garcia, Siteri Maravou, Vernal Bailey, Gordon Russell, Sherri SagerFront: Manuel Arteaga, Senseria Conley, Karen Blackwell, Ray Mills, Karen Hernandez, Marceline Combs, Melieni Talakai

Photo by Justin Wu M.D.

2 Ravenswood Family Health CenterRavenswood Family Health Center

Ravenswood Family Health Center’s mission is to improve the health status of the community we serve by providing high quality, culturally competent primary and preventive health care to people of all ages regardless of ability to pay .

— Mission Statement

Provide integrated, coordinated primary health care to low-income and uninsured residents of southeast San Mateo County

What we do

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Primary Medical Care• Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine

• Adult Medicine

• Prenatal Care

• Screenings & Immunizations

• Women’s Health

• Referrals to Specialty Care

Integrated Behavioral Health Services• Crisis intervention

• Short-term Counseling

• Pediatric & Adult

Social Service Referral

• Parenting Support

• Psychiatric Consult

• Domestic Violence Counseling

Center for Health Promotion• Chronic Disease Management

• Health Coaching

• Health Coverage Enrollment

Ravenswood Family Dentistry• Pediatric & Adult Dental

• Preventive care

• Restorative & Periodontal care

• Oral surgery

• Emergency dental services

• Oral Health Education

Meeting of Minds

Aligned and Ready to Build

Ravenswood Family Health Center - Main Clinic Tel: (650) 330-74001798A Bay Road, East Palo Alto, CA 94303

Center for Health Promotion1805 Bay Road, East Palo Alto

Ravenswood Family Dentistry1807 Bay Rd., East Palo Alto(650) 289-7700

Belle Haven Clinic Tel: (650) 321-0980 100 Terminal Avenue, Menlo Park, CA 94025

Board of DirectorsJulio Garcia, Chair

Jonathan Lindeke, Vice Chair

Gordon Russell, Treasurer

Karen Hernandez, Secretary

Manuel Arteaga

Vernal Bailey

Karen Blackwell

Marcelline Combs

Senseria Conley

Siteri Maravou

Melieni Talakai

Ray Mills, Board Liaison

Sherri Sager, Board Liaison

Advisory CouncilPatricia Bresee, Chair

Maya Altman

Greg Avis

Caretha Coleman

Chris Dawes

Rob Freelen

Greg Gallo

Rose Jacobs Gibson

Dr. Ross Jaffe

Jim Koshland

Dr. Phil Lee

Dr. Richard Levy

John A. Sobrato

Dr. Frederick St. Goar

Jane Williams

Ravenswood Family Health Center is a direct outgrowth of the city that gave birth to it.

The City of East Palo Alto emerged from the civil rights era of the 1960s as a dynamic African American communi-ty. By the 1990s it was one of the most culturally diverse cities in Silicon Valley with one of the highest concentrations of new immigrants.

Incorporated in 1983, East Palo Alto was in its infancy in 1992 when a drug turf war led to its designation as the na-tion’s murder capital. That crisis was the catalyst that brought critical support to the city. Sharifa Wilson, Mayor at the time, secured funds and local support to strengthen city departments and got Governor Pete Wilson to designate the city as an enterprise zone in 1993, giv-ing tax incentives to bring in new busi-nesses to shore up a weak tax base. Then, in 1997 the Drew Health Founda-tion that had served the community for 30 years imploded. Its federal grant to provide care to the medically uninsured was pulled. The City Council and the leadership of the County Health De-

partment and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford knew that withdraw-ing federal funds for healthcare to low-income families and uninsured could be irrevocable and a major setback in a community with serious pubic health issues.

Margaret Taylor, then Director of the County Health Department and Sherri Sager, Chief Government Relations Of-ficer for Packard Children’s Hospital re-call their meeting with Congresswoman Anna Eshoo, who was according to Tay-lor, “one of the mainstays of the whole effort to reorganize.” Eshoo, a tenacious advocate for equitable access to health care, conferred with HRSA (Health Resources Services Administration) the federal agency that administered the grant, and the County was invited to submit an application to be interim recipient with the proviso it manage services and assemble a taskforce of community leaders to recommend the priorities for a new community clinic.

“It was a real big issue with Drew closing,” said Nevida Butler, former ED

of Ecumenical Hunger Program, who served on the taskforce. “Our vision was to make sure that with the new clin-ic the people that work there reflect this community, and that the board reflects the community.” Sharifa Wilson, also on the taskforce, brought bold confidence to the table. “Let’s figure this out. Let’s see what we have to do to put the clinic in place.” Everyone agreed that repre-sentation of the diverse community was a top priority. Ultimately, three of the taskforce members, Dr. Cecil Reeves of the County Office of Education, Melieni Talakai and Julio Garcia, representing the 3 main ethnic groups, were invited to serve on Ravenswood’s Board.

After 5 months deliberation, the Taskforce submitted their recommenda-tions to HRSA in November 1998. In the spring 1999, the County was awarded the grant and had to provide primary care services together with Lucile Pack-ard Children’s Hospital, and in the ensu-ing months, find a site and construct a clinic. The race was on. The new clinic needed to be ready by November 2001.

It was the right people, the right partners, the right time.

Health Director Margaret Tay-lor and her deputy director at the time, Maya Altman, talked with the city about a site, and brought in con-sultants to plan the new clinic. One of those consultants was Luisa Buada, who would be recruited in 2002 to be its CEO, when the County’s interim CEO stepped down. Together with Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, the County went to The Packard Foundation that helped to secure a capital grant of $1.2 million to build the clinic.

At the same time, Sterling Speirn, President of Peninsula Community Foundation, (predecessor to Silicon Valley Community Foundation) was also looking for a site in East Palo Alto for a multi-service nonprofit center. “There weren’t many parcels available, and owners were hoping to reap speculative profits,” Speirn recalls. There was a city-owned site on Bay Road but there was a draw-back, Speirn recalls wryly. “It had a

unique geological strata – not rock, but rather a field of tires buried six feet deep.” But Speirn already felt a connection to a joint project with the clinic. “My first job in the nonprofit sector in 1982 was as a reception-ist and then a Deputy Director at the Humboldt Open Door Clinic in Arca-ta, CA, a federally qualified commu-nity health center.”

The “stars” were aligned. From the City’s perspective, a joint project matched the Redevelopment Agen-cy’s plan, Wilson said, “Bay was to be the main thoroughfare, and we’re go-ing to locate all the nonprofits on that corridor.” In May 2001, the City Coun-cil agreed to lease the site for the un-beatable price of a $1 a year. Penin-sula Community Foundation’s donors waiting in the wings were ready to invest and contributed $1.8 million for site clean-up, infrastructure, and the construction of the Community Resource Center. The donor names are engraved on a large display at its entrance.

Long-Term Investment

Building is just the first chapter of a story. Sustaining an organization

as complex as a community clinic takes people with philanthropic fore-sight who hold on to their investment. Before his recent retirement as CEO of W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Speirn paid a visit to the Bay Area and met with Gordon Russell, his long-time friend from PCF days when Russell served on its Board. Speirn was struck by the fact that Gordon has stayed so involved at Ravenswood. When PCF merged with Commu-nity Foundation of Silicon Valley to become the regional Silicon Valley Community Foundation, Speirn re-calls, “He chose not to pass the ba-ton, but to carry it with him, roll up his sleeves and joined the Board of Directors at Ravenswood. He took me for a drive over to East Palo Alto to show me what Ravenswood Fam-ily Health Center had miraculously become.”

Celebrating Serviceto the Community

“The vision for this health center has been evolving. We are here to provide access to those people who have the greatest barriers, and we see that as our mission. And we’re not going to base what we do on reimbursement. We’re going to do it because it needs to be done, it’s the right think to do. And that integrity of principle has brought us the riches that have allowed us to serve our patients in the way that we feel is the highest quality care.” – Luisa Buada, CEO

Opening Doors

Preparing for the Future

Converting to EHR is being imple-mented at warp speed nationwide, incentivized by federal subsidies

associated with implementation of the Affordable Care Act. With careful top-down planning by Ravenswood’s ex-ecutive team led by Dr. Justin Wu, the conversion took place within 9 months in 2013. It’s starting to bear fruit, beginning with access to patient history, health sta-tus data, enabling evidence-based pa-tient care. This milestone was achieved thanks to the support of Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, now called Stanford Children’s Health.

Space Constraints

With a 7,800 sq ft. modular clinic, Ravenswood was beset by space

constraints. For years, it’s been like “mu-sical desks” with staff being moved from one location to another to allow for more exam rooms or space for new services. Closets had to be turned into offices.

As early as 2004, Ravenswood pro-posed a multi-service site on Bay Road. But attempts to aggregate enough land for a new facility and parking lot met with one road block after another. In 2008, Silicon Valley Community Foundation granted $1.2 million to purchase an acre adjacent to the existing clinic as the site for the new health center. The idea was that Ravenswood would negotiate with the city to purchase its current leased site to allow for expanded parking. When the State did away with Redevelopment

agencies in February 2012, acquiring the land from the City was no longer an op-tion. Finally, in 2013 Silicon Valley’s cel-ebrated developer John Sobrato settled the matter. He signed over an option to purchase 3 acres at the intersection of Bay and Pulgas to Ravenswood.

Ravenswood employs 160 staff spread across six sites and currently serves 11,600 annually. When the new center is completed in April 2015, Raven-swood will double patients to 22,000 with 58 exam rooms, 12 behavioral health counseling rooms, a laboratory, imaging, optometry and a pharmacy. Designed by INDE Architecture, the new facility is be-ing constructed by Rudolph & Sletten.

On December 4, 2001, Raven-swood Family Health Center, originally called South County

Community Health Center, opened its doors with 11 employees, 4 medical providers and 15 exam rooms.

Almost from start, the lobby was overflowing. Within the first three years Ravenswood added homeless care outreach, Comprehensive Peri-natal Services, and an immunization clinic. Its ramp up rivaled any Silicon Valley start up. Within five years, Ra-venswood had quadrupled its staff and served over 20,000 patients. By 2006 Ravenswood inherited a mobile clinic from Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital and took over the Belle Haven Clinic, formerly managed by the County.

Foundational Support As a young clinic, Ravenswood re-

ceived the invaluable support of public and private partners. Even be-fore the clinic opened Dr. Fernando Mendoza and CEO Christopher Dawes of Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital had been championing pediatric ser-vices for East Palo Alto. Dawes, him-self, served for a time on the Board of the EPA Teen Home. Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital has maintained an annual commitment to fund pediatric services at Ravenswood.

At Peninsula Community Founda-tion, Ravenswood had the help of sea-

soned staff. Vice President of Grant-making, Ellen Clear and Program Officer Srija Srinivasan, approved by its board, provided critical grant support. In 2005 Palo Alto Medical Foundation and Kaiser Foundation began investing their support of quality improvement ef-

forts. Subsequently, in 2013, Palo Alto Medical Foundation-Sutter Health com-mitted $2 million to the new clinic.

Since 2002, San Mateo County Health Services has funded Raven-swood’s health care for the homeless services, as well as Community Health Advocates that provide eligibility and enrollment services and since 2008, Behavioral Health services that pro-vides patients with short-term counsel-ing and an array of social services.

With dental disease so prevalent, RFHC contracted with a mobile den-tal clinic but that only reached a limited number of patients. Fortunately, CEO Luisa Buada is not one to leave others to solve a problem and once begun, she does not do things in half mea-sures. The result, in April 2010 Raven-swood opened a 10-chair dental op-eratory with the latest technology, built with a $1.5 million grant from The Pack-ard Foundation. Its plain facade belies what is within. Private dentists touring the facility envied the state-of-the art set up. Simultaneously, RFHC added a Center for Health Promotion, funded by Ravenswood’s Board member and former venture capitalist, Gordon Rus-sell. The facility houses a branch of the Stanford Health Library and offices for Community Health Advocates who de-termine eligibility and coordinate enroll-ment and new patient orientation.

In 2011, Ravenswood enjoyed a brief lull and turned attention to new strategies to make patients healthier. On the 10th anniversary of 9/11, ninety volunteers from LinkedIn and Pillsbury Winthrop law firm came together with Rebuilding Together to build a 19-bed Patient-Staff Ravenswood Garden with technical support from its community partner Collective Roots. It was a life-giving tribute. Soon after Ravenswood became the community site for a week-ly Farmer’s Market.

When we opened the doors, there was so much hope and we had a dream of really creating a vibrant community health center that would attract and be there not only for the uninsured patients in the community or the Medi-Cal patients but also would be attractive to insured patients.~Sherri Sager

  In the documentary Ò Dreams of a City,Ó a local barber, James Gilmore observed, Ò The mix we have in East Palo Alto represents the new America; the new country.Ó

Ravenswood Family Health Center4 See our latest videos at www.ravenswoodfhc.org

Breaking New Ground - January 22, 2014

$5,000,000+Health Resources and Services AdministrationMark Zuckerberg & Priscilla Chan

$2,000,000-$4,999,999AnonymousDavid & Lucile Packard FoundationJohn & Sue SobratoPalo Alto Medical Foundation/Sutter HealthSilicon Valley Community Foundation

$1,000,000-$1,999,999Dick and Sue LevyGordon Russell & Tina McAdooJohn & Jill FreidenrichPeery Foundation

$500,000-$999,999American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (ARRA)John & Marcia Goldman Foundation Sand Hill FoundationStanford Hospital & Clinics

$250,000-$499,999AnonymousKaiser PermanenteThe Avis Family FoundationThe Grove Foundation

$100,000-$249,999Community Development Block GrantSan Mateo County Healthcare for the HomelessSobrato Family FoundationTipping Point Community

$50,000-$99,999Andrew & Judith Ann Mendelsohn AnonymousBaxter International FoundationCassani/St. Goar Family FundCathy and James KoshlandGreg & Penny Gallo Pat BreseeRoblake Corporation - RemediationRoss and Eve Jaffe

$25,000-$49,999Bothin FoundationCharles Schwab Charitable Foundation in Honor of Jane WilliamsDonald & Rachel Valentine Foundation Hurlbut-Johnson Charitable TrustLinda and Tony MeierLeslie Family FoundationLuisa BuadaMaya Altman Pitch & Cathy JohnsonRandy & Julie MerkSherri Sager

Up to $25,000Aaron & Sitara LonesADA Foundation (Harris Grant)Alain & Rosemary EnthovenCalifornia Bank & TrustCalifornia Dental Association FoundationCraig and Jane WilliamsDavid and Barbara SloneEast Palo Alto Resource Center DonationEngel Family FundGeoff & Colleen TateGreg & Nancy SerrurierGrotellone Family Fund Harvey CohenIsabella DavisJaime ChavarriaJohn & Pamela ShannonJoseph & Denise ZionyLucile Packard Foundation for Children's Health Manuel ArteagaMargaret TaylorMervin G. & Roslyn G. MorrisMicrosoftO’Brien Family Charitable TrustPat & Kathy GrovesPhil LeeRose Jacobs GibsonTalakai FamilyTed & Sissy GeballeThe Koret Foundation in Honor of John SobratoThomas FogartyWachovia Wells Fargo Foundation

Gifts and CommitmentsCapital Campaign

T here are times when a community shines and times when it bursts with energy. The groundbreak-

ing for this clinic is one of those moments in history. Through the clinic’s doors human beings will have their most basic medical needs met in a state-of-art facility worthy of the people it serves.

– Congresswoman Jackie Speier

More than anything else, what we are celebrating today as we break this sacred ground is that this is

a community—all of us together—recognizing the sanc-tity of each human being. As they come into this new building... as they come here to be healed, they will not only be healed, they will understand that hope is alive, progress is alive and that we are one community.

– Congresswoman Anna Eshoo

To learn more or make a gift, please contact Jessica Chiu 650/617-7830jchiu@ravenswoodfhc.org

I’m so excited about seeing a new building because it will instill a sense of pride... It sends the message of hope, the message of quality, the message of we deserve this. – Sharifa Wilson

The New Ravenswood Family Health Clinic Building

Leading the effort to build the clinic, Pat Bresee former Commissioner

of the San Mateo County Su-perior Court, chaired an Ad-visory Council of members whose influence with Silicon Valley executive leaders and philanthropists helped to jump start the capital campaign.

Emmett Carson, CEO Silicon Valley Community Foundation, “I don’t ever want you to doubt what lead-

ership and vision can accom-plish," pointing to the com-bined efforts of Ravenswood’s leadership and partners. And, then he announced, “I am very pleased to announce the end of the construction phase of this project. Mark Zucker-berg and his wife Dr. Priscilla Chan have made a grant of $5 million closing out the con-struction phase.”

Before deciding to fund the new health center, Dr. Chan, a pediatric resident at UCSF, met with pediatrician Dr. Lisa Chamberlain at Ra-venswood and toured the pe-diatric clinic. Dr. Chamberlain commented. "Dr. Chan's un-derstanding about the inter-section of health, education and poverty was spot-on.”

Dr. Chan was already sensitive to the impact of pov-

erty on health, according to a recent New Yorker article. While an undergraduate at Harvard, Dr. Chan had vol-unteered five days a week at

housing projects in Dorches-ter. Dr. Chan observed, "As a pediatrician, I have seen great need for high quality, comprehensive health care and also the positive impact care can make on the entire family."

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Spring 2014 Newsletter