Building on our Past, Believing in our Future

Over the last twenty years, we’ve raised more than $26 million for front-line medical and dental providers, state-of-the-art medical technology, and evidence-based mental health services. These substantial investments have changed the face of healthcare in our community.

While the Healthcare Foundation was created to stabilize and invest in the Healdsburg District Hospital, foundation organizers recognized early on that other healthcare service providers in the area might need and deserve financial assistance. The Alliance Medical Center was included in the list of potential beneficiaries from the beginning, and the new foundation was empowered to make grants to any healthcare cause in our area. 

That foresight has allowed us to remain flexible and meet a wide range of healthcare needs in our community. And our supporters have stepped up time and time again to help guarantee healthcare access for all our neighbors. 

Last year, for example, the Healthcare Foundation was able to give Reach for Home a substantial grant for their pilot Street Medicine initiative—a program, unlike anything we’ve seen in our community before. You can read more below about what a huge difference it’s making in the health of homeless individuals here in northern Sonoma County. 

We’re proud of the long-term investments we’ve been able to make and excited to build upon that legacy in the next decade. Do you remember the early days of the Healthcare Foundation? If you have a memory (or a photo!) from the foundation’s beginnings, please send them our way at info@healthcarefoundation.net.

Believe in… INNOVATION

The Healthcare Foundation is honored to support Health Access and Mental Health through an innovative Street Medicine program with the homeless population. With the support of our funding, Nurse Jaclyn Ramirez of Reach for Home is building trust with homeless community members, providing them with medical care and connecting them with other services. 

“Street Medicine means bringing medical care to the streets, to the encampments, and engaging with individuals in their territory, on their terms,” says Jaclyn. Many of the people she’s working with are aging, or have untreated chronic conditions or injuries that need care. “A lot of them sometimes go years without being seen by a medical provider,” she explains because they have not been treated with dignity and respect and don’t want to return. 

Much of what Jaclyn and the Reach for Home team are doing is rebuilding that trust. Recently, Jaclyn was asked to check on a young woman living on the streets in Windsor who is pregnant. When Jaclyn arrived, they recognized each other immediately from an earlier meeting. “Because she trusted me,” Jaclyn says, “she’s now willing to move forward with that conversation.” 

Jaclyn helped this woman get prenatal vitamins and is connecting her with medical providers for bloodwork, ultrasounds, and other prenatal treatment. Jaclyn will be at her side for every step of the way.

There are many reasons people become homeless, and it can take a constellation of services to stabilize them and get them back into housing. Addressing homeless individuals’ medical health is a vital part of that process. “Statistically speaking, when you provide housing and services, specifically medical and mental health services, you will see a reduction in the number of homeless,” says Colleen Carmichael, Reach for Home’s executive director. “When you don’t, you see an increase.” 

The bottom line, Colleen says, is that the Healthcare Foundation’s support of the Street Medicine program means that lives are being saved and that some of our most vulnerable community members are getting the medical treatment they desperately need—treatment they wouldn’t get otherwise. 

The Healthcare Foundation is able to support this unique and innovative program because so many of you have believed in us and our work. We’re extremely grateful for that trust. If you’d like to help us support this and other healthcare access programs making a difference for our neighbors, click here to make a donation.