The People Who Made it Possible OUR 2021 ANNUAL REPORT

Through a pandemic, fire, and a complicated work-life balance, one employee responds by leaning in

Last September when a COVID-19 surge, limited staffing, lingering disruptions from 2020’s devastating fires, and a challenging graduate school schedule pushed and pulled on Phoenix Health Center nurse Branddy Walter, she turned to work that feeds her soul — providing care at camps for agricultural workers.

“They are so grateful for care,” she said. “I knew every person I touched that day, I changed their life.”

La Clinica’s life-changing daily work is what kept her and teams across the organization going in 2021.

Even as La Clinica adapted to waves of the pandemic, rapidly rolling out respiratory triage, testing, treatment, and vaccination, patients still had chronic illnesses that required regular attention.

“Our patients needed us, and we were there for them,” Branddy said.

Branddy came to La Clinica in 2015 to work in a primary care clinic and serve Spanish-speaking patients enroute to her goal of becoming a nurse practitioner. In 2019 she started a graduate program to earn a master’s degree in nursing at Gonzaga University. After chaotic years of online study and working split shifts to get required clinical training across La Clinica, she graduated this spring and will become a primary care provider at Phoenix Health Center in the fall.

“I’m really blessed to work with a team that is here for our patients, for our mission, and for each other,” she said.

Phoenix Practice Manager Amy McClung describes Branddy as a constant, dedicated force on the team. She’s the first to respond to emergency codes in the clinic. She served on a language-access workgroup to improve communication with patients and has led Phoenix’s wellness committee to support employee well-being.

The Almeda fire, which surrounded and displaced the Phoenix Health Center for a month in 2020, also threatened her home. Cleanup and road closures left Branddy and her family waiting at home for two weeks, initially with no water or power, but as soon as she was back with the team, she had the wellness committee meeting weekly. They replicated a popular chili cookoff for employees in a COVID-safe format, packaging individual servings of each entry for everyone.

She and the committee recognized the need for a taste of comfort and connection amidst the shared trauma of personal and professional disruption.

“I’m a determined person,” Branddy said. “When things are bad, the sense of normalcy helps. The whole world goes on, and so do I.”

Background photo: Branddy Walter talks with MartÍn González López, a Harry & David agricultural worker, at an outreach visit in 2021.

New team keeps vulnerable residents safely connected and cared for

When Virginia Pearson suddenly lost vision in one eye, the 68-year-old struggled on her limited income to pay for cabs to get groceries and go to doctor appointments.

That’s when Delia Hernandez, a health outreach specialist at La Clinica, started making weekly visits to Virginia’s Medford apartment to check her blood pressure and make sure she was taking the medication that could help control her risk of an eye stroke, the condition that had disrupted blood flow to her retina. Then Patty Gonzalez, a La Clinica community resource specialist, started coming along on those visits to connect Virginia with help getting groceries, transportation, and other basics to keep her active and healthy.

Health outreach specialists and community resource specialists are two positions created as part of La Clinica’s efforts in the past year to weave an ever-stronger web of support around patients. They take on duties previously held by other parts of the care team and build on La Clinica’s long commitment to supporting people where they are, beyond clinic walls. COVID reinforced the need for this kind of outreach.

In the first six months since the teams formed in October, they had nearly 1,900 interactions with patients. The World Health Organization notes that non-medical factors such as housing, income, education, employment, access to food, and social connections can account for 30-55% of health.

“With home visits, we learn more about the barriers our patients are facing and can often support them better because of this enhanced knowledge,” La Clinica Chief Operations Officer Tara Kirk said.

For Virginia, that’s been a range of practical and personal support. Delia sat with her through a long and stressful appointment with a specialist who evaluated her vision loss and the pain and pressure in her eye.

“I didn’t want to go through that alone, learning that I’m going to be half blind,” Virginia said. “I wanted someone to support me, and she stayed with me the whole time.”

Patty has filed out forms and advocated at agencies in ongoing efforts to get Virginia’s Supplemental Security Income increased and to determine if her insurance will cover in-home help. Virginia is also hard of hearing, so Delia and Patty are helping her navigate phone calls to assess whether she qualifies for Meals on Wheels.

“They help with all my paperwork and appointments and transportation. They answer all kinds of questions for me. The help from them has been terrific,” Virginia said.

Background photo: Delia Hernandez, right, and Virginia Pearson, who said of Delia's decision to accompany her on a lengthy vision-care visit: “I wanted someone to support me, and she stayed with me the whole time.”

La Clinica creates ties with others with the goal of deepening service

Every Friday morning, the ACCESS mobile food pantry pulls into the parking lot of La Clinica Wellness Center, ready to serve families and individuals with fresh food. In the afternoon, it's at Phoenix Health Center. The service to community members is possible thanks to a collaboration between ACCESS and La Clinica, part of a larger plan by La Clinica’s leaders to increase partnerships to meet emerging needs of residents still suffering after 2020’s fires and two years of the pandemic.

“We are delighted to be able to operate our Healthy Mobile Pantry at La Clinica locations where people can receive broader support” such as information about community resources provided by La Clinica staff stationed at the pantry, said Marcee Champion, food programs director for ACCESS. “These are the kinds of partnerships that help families, and the community as a whole, grow stronger and healthier.”

Ed Smith-Burns, who became La Clinica’s first community partnership director in mid 2020, focuses much of his time on creating these collaborations. In addition to expanding on the work with ACCESS, La Clinica is now partnering with the city of Medford and the homeless-support organization Rogue Retreat to offer mobile health services at a new homeless navigation center opening this summer on Market Street in Medford.

Plans are in place to open a small clinic at a new housing facility being built by Options for Helping Residents of Ashland for residents displaced by the Almeda fire, and construction of a health and wellness clinic will begin in Rogue River in 2023 through a partnership with Rogue River school district and Jackson Care Connect. Another new partnership is starting with Coalicion Fortaleza, a Latinx-led, intergenerational coalition of community members, volunteers, and organizations formed in the aftermath of the Almeda fire.

In addition, a La Clinica team is reaching out to corporate partners to create ways for their employees to learn about the array of services the organization provides. La Clinica aims to make it easy for partners’ employees to connect to care through these partnerships, allowing the organization to give back to donors and supporters. And all the partnerships add up to more people in the community having access to quality services, which is the core mission of La Clinica.

“The pandemic and the fires brought new opportunities for connections with community partners and a greater need for collaboration to help people rebuild,” Ed Smith-Burns says of the work. “As we move into a new phase of recovery, we will continue to expand partnerships to meet the growing needs of those who most need us, including people living in poverty, agricultural workers, and people without homes.”

Background photo: Volunteer Edith Abercrombie works with pantry visitors to find the right selection of fresh produce.

“As we move into a new phase of recovery, we will continue to expand partnerships to meet the growing needs of those who most need us, including people living in poverty, agricultural workers, and people without homes.” —Ed Smith-Burns

As the community emerges from hard times, La Clinica expands education

After the shock of the COVID pandemic, fires, and nationwide protests for racial and social justice, La Clinica looked in 2021 to begin sharing its work on resilience, well-being, and equity through new community educational opportunities.

Leaders laid the groundwork for The Learning Well, a learning and support service that brings together personal development workshops, wellness classes and groups, and workforce training. La Clinica hired its first equity, diversity, and inclusion director to guide ongoing work in this area and help those efforts ripple through the community.

“The idea of The Learning Well covers all that. It is how we look at ways to climb out, to look for post-traumatic growth,” said Margie McNabb, who leads this work at La Clinica.

Courses are designed to help patients and other community members focus on the parts of their life that matter most to them—body, mind, spirit, emotions, relationships, career, and environment—and then learn how to craft their healthiest and most satisfying life. In mid-2022, the service will incorporate WinterSpring grief support programs as well.

La Clinica’s equity work is a natural fit with education, said Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Director Bryon Lambert.

“Sexism, racism, all of the -isms are all learned behavior,” he explained. “We have to relearn new behaviors. That’s why I see great opportunity to shift behaviors and attitudes to be a more inclusive community.”

He noted that La Clinica has processes in place for continuous learning and improvement, giving it a head start in continuing work to identify and remove barriers patients face related to their race, ethnicity, and gender or sexual identity.

Sharing the transformative power of education with all is the goal behind these varied services.

“I love that we are building this to meet people where they are,” Margie said.

Background photo: Instructor Tricia Prendergast, right, leads Cindy Babcock, left, and Martha Ward in a movement class at La Clinica Wellness Center. La Clinica's new education service takes a whole-person approach to wellness and makes most classes and workshops available to the full community.

Dedicated donors help organization weather the toughest times

In March 2020, the early days of the pandemic, Anne and Chris Alftine, both physicians and longtime supporters of La Clinica, sent a letter to their children’s school community to ask for operational support for La Clinica.

Their invitation to families of St. Mary’s School in Medford brought in close to 30 donations, and some of those donors have continued with annual giving. New and ongoing support (the Alftines have been giving to La Clinica since 2011, and Chris serves on the board) and community investment from partners helped La Clinica provide quality primary care and supportive services through recent challenges.

“We knew La Clinica would be an essential part of the response to COVID and to the health of our community beyond COVID,” Anne said. “We were inspired to reach out to another amazing community at St. Mary’s to help people understand the immediate needs during the time of early COVID and ask for donations.”

Anne previously worked at Jackson Care Connect, a community health plan that is also a strong supporter of La Clinica. In 2020 and 2021, JCC and its parent company, CareOregon, provided COVID stabilization support to La Clinica at a time when revenue from patient services was down because of the pandemic and fires. This support allowed clinic leaders to swiftly shift directions, adding virtual appointments, more services in community settings through the mobile health center, and a respiratory triage clinic for people with COVID symptoms.

The team at JCC wanted to do more than provide financial support to La Clinica, though. They also brought care packages of healthy food to clinics and coffee and bagels to other staff. This type of personal support let those working extra hours to support the community during a time of medical crisis know that they were appreciated. JCC leaders recognized that healthcare workers sometimes put their own health on the line to serve patients.

“It was incredible to be a resident of this valley through the traumas of our last few years and directly feel the impact of La Clinica staff on our community’s safety,” said Jennifer Lind, CEO of JCC. “I know many La Clinica staff both professionally and personally. Their commitment to our community has been both humbling and inspiring. Jackson Care Connect is deeply appreciative of being able to partner with La Clinica, find ways to laugh together, and ultimately build resilience for our valley.”

Background photo: Clinical employees hold flowers donated by Harry & David, one of a number of organizations to reach out to support La Clinica's employees in 2021.

“It was incredible to be a resident of this valley through the traumas of our last few years and directly feel the impact of La Clinica staff on our community’s safety.” —Jennifer Lind, Jackson Care Connect