Health and Healing at Virginia Garcia Clinic
As part of SVP Portland, the Encore Fellows Program provides a source of expertise for nonprofit organizations, helps individuals (Fellows) transition from their careers into social-purpose work, and gives corporations a new way to positively impact their communities. Encore Fellows who have retired from a career are matched with host nonprofit organizations based on their passions, skills, and experience.
In 1975, six-year-old Virginia Garcia died from what should have been an easily treatable infected wound because of economic, language, and cultural barriers to health care. Her community, which included farmworkers in Washington and Yamhill counties, were moved to action by Virginia’s unnecessary death, and quickly rallied together to open the first Virginia Garcia Memorial Health Center in a three-car garage, determined to prevent similar tragedies from occurring.
Encore Fellow Carol Wise, who spent her entire career in healthcare, was similarly moved to join the Virginia Garcia Clinic and help her community at the beginning of the pandemic. Carol had applied to be an Encore Fellow and when the opportunity arose to do a project for Virginia Garcia, Carol said “it was a pleasure to get the call!”
Today, Virginia Garcia provides healthcare services to 52,000 patients a year at five primary-care clinics and pharmacies, six dental clinics, a Women’s Clinic, and five school-based health centers. (Combined, these service 1 in every 14 residents of Washington and Yamhill counties!) They also provide outreach to schools, community health fairs, and to migrant and seasonal farmworkers at local camps and commercial nurseries through a mobile clinic. The project that Carol helped manage was a grant-funded mental health service program that supported people affected by COVID. They provided 1,819 counseling sessions to more than 580 community members to support their wellbeing and mitigate the emotional stress associated with the pandemic, and distributed a thousand COVID hygiene kits to the seasonal migrant and farmworkers in the county. In addition, Virginia Garcia:
sent 50,000+ direct care messages directed to community members who were tested or vaccinated for COVID;
promoted COVID testing services to the Latinx communities on local radio stations and via social media;
partnered with Dr. Omar Reda to provide Muslim and immigrant outreach events from January through June 2021, which focused on healing conversations, youth empowerment, and providing refugees safe space.
Over the course of the year, the mental health service program ended due to funding. Carol then stepped in to a position left vacant by a departing project manager for a population-based, enhanced-care management program. Virginia Garcia developed a tool to identify high-complexity patients who benefit from individualized management that is integrated with their medical care, mental health care, substance abuse care, dental care, and community services. Carol is proud of these integrated services and the overall care that Virginia Garcia provides. She says, “It is a terrific organization and I can’t say enough good things about them. My Encore Fellowship was good exposure to parts of healthcare I hadn't previously worked in directly–like mental health–and it changed my perspective on some things.” After a year and a half of what often felt like a full-time job, Carol still says, “It was such a refreshing experience!”