Dignity Health Donates More than $1 Million to Sacramento-Area Nonprofits In 2020

Sacramento, Calif. (June 15, 2020) – Dignity Health announced today the distribution of more than $1 Million this year to over 30 community-based organizations in Nevada, Sacramento and Yolo counties in an effort to meet community health needs outside hospital walls. The grants are funding an array of different projects but all have one common goal – to assist those most vulnerable in the region. From low-income, under-insured/uninsured individuals to human trafficking survivors.

“At Dignity Health, we have a long history of partnering with others in the community to improve people’s quality of life because we understand health and wellness does not begin within our hospitals,” said Laurie Harting, Greater Sacramento Division President of Dignity Health. “These grants continue to be an important extension of the work done in our care facilities and a way to help us care for the whole person through unique collaborations.”

In total, Dignity Health funded 15 projects, but it considers only grant proposals that come from at least three collaborating organizations.

“Our work in community grants is an extension of our mission as an organization,” said Dignity Health Community Health and Outreach Manager, Phoua Moua. “Using a holistic approach, innovation and collaboration are used to ultimately increase the continuum of care for our patients and the communities we serve beyond the hospital walls.”

Dignity Health conducts a needs assessment every three years in each county to determine priorities for giving. Moua works closely with nonprofits receiving the grants to ensure they are successful and encourages returning organizations to make enhancements to their programs in an effort to continuously challenge themselves and evolve. As was the case with the Food Literacy Center this year who teamed up with the Health Education Council to reach their students’ parents as part of the FEAST program, which inspires students at Sacramento’s low-income elementary schools to eat fresh and locally-sourced fruits and vegetables.  

“At Food Literacy Center we inspire kids to eat their veggies, which sets them up for a lifetime of healthy habits. All the partners funded by this grant provide our programs for free to the five low-income schools we serve, reaching students at highest risk for diet-related diseases,” said Founding Executive Director, Amber K. Stott. “Building partnerships like we have with Health Education Council takes time, and very few grants are large enough to fund all the partners collectively. We're grateful that Dignity Health recognizes existing nonprofit partnerships as valuable.”

Grant projects address issues impacting children all the way through the various communities’ senior population. For information on 2020 partnerships and projects, view summary below.

2020 Community Health & Outreach Grant Award Summary

The greater Sacramento region has awarded $1,014,040 in community grants to fifteen collaborative proposals across Sacramento, Yolo and Nevada counties for CY 2020.
(In Sacramento County, $776,195 in community grants have been awarded to ten partnerships)

Salud Con Dignidad (Health with Dignity) 
This collaboration will connect low-income, under-insured/uninsured, predominantly Latino, Sacramento residents with health education and social service resources. The collaboration will utilize a holistic, coordinated-care approach to well-being via comprehensive outreach, direct health-education, health, and legal services. Resources and services will focus primarily on behavioral health, nutrition, and immigration-related needs, but will also include access to primary, vision, and oral health services. Additionally, collaborative partners will also organize community resilience events such as family leadership conferences.

• Lead Organization: La Familia Counseling Center
• Partners:  Latino Coalition for a Healthy California, Sacramento Native American Health Center, &  Family, Unity, Education, and Legal (FUEL) Network

Food Exploration and School Transformation (FEAST)
This project will include improving school health through school district policy, cooking and nutrition education and tastings, and garden education for students and families. Our objective is to increase vegetable consumption among low-income kids and families by creating a full circle connection in which they can grow their food, consume this produce in the cafeteria and learn to cook or prepare this food during the same month, which we call Vegetable of the Month, while improving compliance with school guidelines to support healthy choices by training and empowering students and families

• Lead Organization: Food Literacy Center
• Partners: Soil Born Farms, Health Education Council

Healthy Eating on Franklin Blvd
The project aims to improve the health of residents in Franklin Blvd District by educating restaurant owners and community members, and training them to advocate for healthy food in their community. The hope is to improve health knowledge and health advocacy skills of restaurants and community members. By coming together to learn about diet-related disease and being trained to be self-sufficient in improving their community, this collaborative hopes to begin changing the health environment with these residents.

• Lead Organization: Food Literacy Center
• Partners: La Familia, Franklin Blvd Business District

Continuum of Care for Arden Area’s Low-Income Pregnant Women and Teens
This collaborative will focus on ensuring low-income pregnant women and teens in the Arden area have all of the care they need to transition to parenthood, including a healthy pregnancy, safe home and parenting support. The collaborative will provide pregnancy tests and ultrasounds, Medi-Cal presumptive eligibility signups, prenatal and postnatal care, pediatric care, housing, parenting education and support.

• Lead Organization: Sacramento Life Center
• Partners: WellSpace Health’s Arden-Arcade Community Health Center & Bishop Gallegos Maternity Home

Behavioral Health Recuperative Care: Supporting client needs and building community capacity through collaboration
There are currently no long term options available for respite/recuperative care for these individuals and yet they are some of the most vulnerable people left unsheltered in our communities. By leveraging existing services and linkages to the four Dignity hospitals in our communities, including the new psychiatric urgent care at Mercy San Juan Medical Center, this collaboration build and test a program to provide recuperative care for clients experiencing homelessness that also have a behavioral health diagnosis, with housing and supportive services.

• Lead Organization: Sacramento Covered
• Partners: Sacramento Native American Health Center, The Yoga Seed Collective, Legal Services of Northern California

Unveiling Breast Cancer-Mind, Body, Soul-Serving the Whole Woman
The collaboration between Carrie’s TOUCH, Encouraging Life Organization and First Baptist Church Sacramento, is designed to promote overall wellness and enhance the quality of life of a population that is diverse and often marginalized-African American women. With cultural sensitivity, this collaboration will engage, inform and provide resources including mammography screening, and chronic illness screenings and management.

• Lead Organization: Carrie’s TOUCH
• Partners: Encouraging Life Organization & First Baptist Church Sacramento

Education, Response and Access (ERA)
ERA is a collaborative program, directly addressing the challenges faced by communities, individuals, and health centers due to the opioid epidemic. ERA responds to the challenges of navigating the often confusing systems of care by providing wraparound services: case management, transportation, opiate overdose prevention training, individual and family counseling, Medi-Cal/benefits navigation and expedited entrance into Medication Assisted Treatment.

• Lead Organization: Harm Reduction Services
• Partners: Lighthouse of Hopeful Hearts& Gender Health Center

Dementia Care and Support Navigation
This collaborative will offer a set of core services to persons with Alzheimer's Disease and their care partners, including 24/7 Helpline, care consultations, education workshops, AlzDirectConnect (health care provider fax referral), support groups (early stage Alzheimer's Disease and care partner groups) and safety services. They will also conduct provider outreach and professional training. Del Oro Caregiver Resource Center's (DOCRC) will offer assessment, counseling and respite grants for caregivers. Rebuilding Together (RT) will offer home safety assessments and minor home modifications. Mercy Medical Group Geriatric Division (MMGG) will participate in the Alz Direct Connect Referral program to refer patients to services offered by the partner agencies, provide in kind space for education classes and help the partners build additional linkages with other Dignity Health providers.

• Lead Organization: Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Disorders Association
• Partners: Del Oro Caregiver Resource Center. Rebuilding Together, Dignity Health – Mercy Medical Group Geriatrics Division

Healthy Women and Families
The collaborative will provide intensive case management, housing, educational support, and wrap around services to commercially sexually exploited pregnant women and at-risk transition aged young women to improve the long-term health and well-being of families in our community.

• Lead Organization: Community Against Sexual Harm
• Partners: Bishop Gallegos Maternity Home & Freedom Through Education

The Employ + Empower Reintegration Program
This collaborative unites expertise in trauma-informed services, social enterprises, and support for individuals with barriers to employment into a program with the capacity for significant positive impact on the lives of human trafficking survivors. Economic insecurity is a risk factor for, and often a result of, human trafficking. This collaborative will offer a pipeline to supported employment that assists clients on their path towards a safe, secure future and reintegration into positive communities.

• Lead Organization: 3Strands Global Foundation
• Partners: Juma Ventures, PRIDE Industries

Passport to Adulthood
This collaborative will provide high school age youth with the basic knowledge and skills necessary to successfully transition to adulthood. This collaborative will use a combination of workshops, guest speakers, field trips and hands on learning activities.

• Lead Organization: Mutual Assistance Network
• Partners: Project Optimism, Green Technical Education and Employment & Health Education Council

Yolo Healthy Parks, Healthy People
Yolo Health Parks, Healthy People features outreach projects regarding both the preventative and restorative health benefits of spending time in nature. The partners will establish a multi-media outreach program to the general public regarding the human need to be in nature and the interconnection between healthy environments with their own health. The partners envision a focused outreach campaign to medical and health care professionals about the physical and mental health benefits of being in nature in addition to outreach to the general public.

• Lead Organization: Cache Creek Conservancy
• Partners: Putah Creek Council, Yolo Healthy Aging Alliance

YoloCare
YoloCare provides a safety net of 24/7,community-based palliative care – wrap-around, interdisciplinary services addressing the medical, social services, religious, and medical-related transportation needs of our most vulnerable neighbors suffering chronic/long-term and serious illness. Using an innovative, collaborative approach, YoloCare reaches patients who often slip through cracks in care systems. Yolo Hospice is one of three community organizations in northern California (and fewer than 30 nationally) to be Joint Commission accredited for community-based palliative care.

• Lead Organization: Yolo Hospice, Inc.
• Partners: CommuniCare, Fourth & Hope

Rapid Access to Wellness
Access to Wellness is an innovative collaboration building on the successful pilot where law enforcement and homeless providers directly connect a community member to substance use disorder treatment. The project adds key elements of expanded housing, navigation, and medical services, establishing a framework where partnering agencies provide outreach, residential/outpatient treatment, temporary housing, case management/ service connection, medical support, and coordinated entry to provide treatment and stabilization to people experiencing complex needs including SUD and homelessness.

• Lead organization: Granite Wellness Centers
• Partners: Grass Valley Police Department, Hospitality House

Senior Grocery Bag Program
The purpose of this innovative program is to address food insecurity among low income homebound seniors by collaborating with IFM and the Food Bank to pilot the 1st ever senior grocery bag delivery program. Accessing food resources is a major challenge for seniors who are frail and homebound. This program overcomes that barrier by delivering the food to their homes.

• Lead organization: Gold Country Community Services
• Partners: Food Bank of Nevada County, Interfaith Food Ministry, Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital

About Dignity Health

Dignity Health, one of the nation’s largest health care systems, is a multi-state network of 10,000 physicians, more than 60,000 employees, 41 acute care hospitals, and 400-plus care-centers including neighborhood hospitals, urgent care, surgery and imaging centers, home health, and primary care clinics. Headquartered in San Francisco, Dignity Health is dedicated to providing compassionate, high-quality, and affordable patient-centered care with special attention to the poor and underserved. In FY 2019, Dignity Health provided more than $1.1 billion in patient financial assistance, unreimbursed costs of Medicaid, community health improvement services, and other community benefits. For more information, please visit our website at www.dignityhealth.org.