Kim Bender’s Announcement of $35,000 in Emergency COVID-19 Funding

HEALDSBURG, CA., May 12, 2020 – Our Emergency Healthcare Fund is already hard at work in our community! Thanks to your donations, we’re able to support Reach for Home’s transportation of food to North Bay homeless encampments. COVID-19 and the Shelter in Place have left our homeless community members more isolated and vulnerable. We are proud to partner with Reach For Home as they navigate this crisis.

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(Via Healthcare Foundation Northern Sonoma County) - April 24, 2020

Dear Healthcare Foundation Supporters,

Thanks to the generosity of this community, the Healthcare Foundation will be giving $35,000 in emergency grants to organizations providing frontline healthcare during the COVID-19 crisis. With the support of the $20,000 matching grant from Mark Freed of Talon Creek Foundation, we launched the Emergency Healthcare Fund and raised over $15,000, with donations continuing to arrive in support of ongoing needs.

Grants from the Emergency Healthcare Fund are being distributed to the following organizations:

• Alliance Medical Center: $24,000

• Alexander Valley Healthcare: $6,000

• Reach for Home: $5,000

More than 12,000 people in the community are on MediCal, uninsured, and 170 or more are homeless. Our local clinics rely on MediCal and MediCare payments for regular appointments, but with patients staying away for all but the most urgent medical care, the clinics are in acute financial need, as are homeless services providers. The rapid deployment of these funds will allow healthcare workers and homeless service providers on the frontlines to remain focused on caring for those who need help most.

These grants are unrestricted, allowing grantee organizations the flexibility to spend the money where it is most needed. Pressing needs that have been identified include the purchase of telemedicine equipment, paying healthcare staff to reach out by phone to high-risk patients, underwriting volunteers’ transportation for food deliveries, and caring for local people experiencing homelessness.

"We have over a thousand patients with chronic health conditions such as hypertension, diabetes and respiratory conditions who need careful monitoring," noted Joan Churchill, CEO of Alliance Medical Center, which has clinics in Healdsburg and Windsor. "This critical investment will allow us to purchase new equipment for remote monitoring, or telemedicine. We could not make this leap forward into telemedicine without this gift from the Healthcare Foundation."

Thank you to everyone who has made these grants possible. If you’ve been waiting in the wings and are able to make a gift of any amount today, please DONATE NOW to the Emergency Healthcare Fund so we can continue to distribute money to those who need it most.