Episode 94: ROOTS community health center - Healing our Community Within Transcript

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A transcript, lightly edited for clarity and length, follows.

VOC Covid 19 Podcast Roots Comm Health Center EP 94 Mix 1

[00:00:00] George Koster: Welcome to Voices of the Community, which explores critical issues facing Northern California communities. We introduce you to the voices of community thought leaders and change makers who are working on solutions that face our fellow individual community members, neighborhoods, cities, and our region.

[00:00:28] George Koster: This is George Koster your host.

[00:00:33] George Koster: This episode is part of our series Exploring COVID nineteens impact on nonprofits and small businesses in the San Francisco Bay Area back in April of 2020 when we decided to create this ongoing series on COVID nineteens impact, first on nonprofits and then on small businesses in the San Francisco Bay area.

[00:00:52] George Koster: We like you had no idea how long the pandemic would go on and what the health and economic impact would be in our community. As we enter the second half of 2022 with the latest explosion of cases from the most recent COVID-19 Omicron mutations, along with the masking requirements being changed and folks getting their vaccinations, our communities are still struggling to deal with the health, economic, mental, and societal impacts of the ongoing global pandemic.

[00:01:22] George Koster: This all adds to the ongoing uncertainty of our ever-changing indoor and outdoor vaccinated and unvaccinated protocols and the politics of the pandemic that will drive how we all come back together as a unified or fractured community. We will continue to shine a spotlight on the nonprofits and small businesses that make up the fabric of our community, along with the founders and staff who are struggling to deal with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on their operations, services, and sustainability until we can all get to the other side of the pandemic.

[00:01:56] George Koster: Along the way, we will also share with you all the amazing solutions that our nonprofits, small businesses, foundations, and government leaders are working on to help us all get to the other side of the pandemic and come together to rebuild our communities with more economic, social, and environmental equality.

[00:02:13] Noha Aboelata, MD: When the pandemic came, we sort of knew just almost instinctively like, we are gonna have to get in front of this because nobody else is coming to save us. Nobody is going to be coming to our community to be specifically ensuring that they have the resources and the information. So we mobilized very quickly and we actually set up the first walk up testing site in the whole Bay Area.

[00:02:40] Noha Aboelata, MD: And that was in April, 2020. And we've been testing really three times a week at that site ever since.

[00:02:48] George Koster: This is Dr. Noha Aboelata, the founder and CEO of Roots Community Health Center. And as a 2022 recipient of the James Irvine Foundation Leadership Award. Here's more about the James Irvine Foundation Leadership Award from James Irvine Foundation program Officer Cindy Downing, who presented the award to Dr. Aboelata at the opening of the Roots Community Health Center's New Miles Armstead Community Center in East Oakland, California.

[00:03:16] Cindy Downing: I'm Cindy Downing. I'm a program officer at the James Irvine Foundation, and I am delighted to start this beautiful day in Oakland with all of you to honor Dr. Aboelataboelatavita with a 2022 with Irvine Foundation Leadership Award.

[00:03:30] Cindy Downing: The Irvine Foundation established leadership awards in 2006 to support the diverse leaders who work day in and day out. Through pandemics, through climate disasters and the occasional Warriors Championship to create a more prosperous and just California, we help share their approaches with policymakers and funders.

[00:03:54] Cindy Downing: We provide each of their organizations with a $250,000 grant and additional resources. But most importantly, these leaders are improving the lives of folks in communities like East Oakland by removing barriers. And creating opportunities that benefit not only those they serve, but all of us. Their innovation, compassion, and dedication are hallmarks of our great state.

[00:04:19] George Koster: Over the past two plus years, our community healthcare centers have faced many challenges in an ever changing landscape, forcing them to adapt and evolve their outreach and delivery of both healthcare and comprehensive wraparound support services to the most at-risk members of our community. In this episode, we're featuring the voices and work of Roots Community Health Center.

[00:04:41] George Koster: Hi everyone. I'm George Koster, your host, and we want to thank you for participating in our virtual live recording of a one hour special radio show. Our show today focuses on the work of the Roots Community Health Center. Our guests for today's show are Dr. Noah Avalara, the founder and CEO of Roots Community Health Center, along with Aquil Naji, the Chief Operations Officer of Roots Health Center, and Ky'Tavia Stafford, a patient services specialist for Roots Community Health Center.

[00:05:08] George Koster: Welcome to Voices of the Community, Dr. Aboelata, Aquil, and Ky. I'd like to, to begin just by having each of you kind of provide a little background on yourself for the audience and why don't we start with you Dr. Aboelata.

[00:05:21] Noha Aboelata, MD: Hi. Thanks for having me. So I'm Noha Aboelata. I'm the founding CEO at Roots Community Health Center.

[00:05:27] Noha Aboelata, MD: I was born and raised in Oakland and went off to medical school at Howard University and did my family medicine training in Southern California and wanted to come back home and work in community medicine. And so that is what I did and, and ended up founding Roots Community Health Center along with our co-founder Nurse Sophia Long back in 2008.

[00:05:51] George Koster: And Aquil, would you like to give us a little background?

[00:05:54] Aquil Naji: Sure. My name is Aquil Naji. I am the COO of Roots Community Health Center, and a couple of years after Doctor of a lot of Founded Roots, I tell DeLong and the mission and I've been there ever since. I have been been at Open for almost 40 years. I'm a business member of the community.

[00:06:11] Aquil Naji: I used to have one of the forefront bovine companies here, and I sold agencies and after I sold agencies, I moved into the work that I continue to do this day, and I'm pretty sure I'll die doing this work. You were also part of the, as I understand, part of the original group that worked with Dr. Aboelata with regards to starting up the center?

[00:06:32] Aquil Naji: Absolutely. I was a part of the think tank. So the think tank was comprised and we put that together and what goes on in this community to know what A did, and here we are today from that think tank. This is what has come to fruition. And you can see the flower of all of the intellectuals who started in that think tank in one little room downstairs from where I am.

[00:06:53] Aquil Naji: And it was the will of the intellectuals and the well minded people of this community that has brought roots to its fruition and continues to grow. Thank you. And Ky' could you provide us a little background on yourself?

[00:07:06] Ky'Tavia Stafford-Carreker: Definitely. It's hard to go after, you know, two honorable people who have honestly been like pretty much role models so far at my time at Roots.

[00:07:14] Ky'Tavia Stafford-Carreker: But I'm Ky'Tavia. I'm from Stockton. I graduated from UCLA in 2020 and I will be starting medical school actually this weekend. I have a summer program called UCLA Prime, so I'll start Prime Drew to have my little drew shirt on. It's A-H-B-C-U and I'm very proud. But yeah, at At Roots I worked as a patient services specialist.

[00:07:30] Ky'Tavia Stafford-Carreker: I'm referral coordinator and I'm just hopping and honored to be here.

[00:07:34] George Koster: Thank you. And so I'd like to turn back to you, Dr. Aboelata, and if you could provide the audience a little background on why you created the Roots Community Health Center and what the mission is.

Yeah, absolutely. I went into family medicine initially just because I really believe that.

We have to think very holistically about health and can't be too narrow. And so part of my going into family medicine was to be, you know, well-versed in everything from newborns to our elders and all of the different stages of life and really wanting to understand what are all the things that contribute to wellness and good health.

And when I got out into practice and working in community medicine, I think I always felt like I was doing good work. I was taking care of sick people, taking care of well babies. But still, the condition of so many folks in the community was still not a state of wellness. And it wasn't necessarily about lack of doctors.

It was all the other things that contribute to good health. And I think it sort of started to dawn on me that what we were doing in medicine was a lot more of sick care than really healthcare. And I felt like if part of my goal and my role is to bring about wellness for folks, then maybe I wanted to do something a little bit broader or a little bit differently.

And so I really started to think about different ways to kind of get out of the four walls of the clinic, so to speak, really understand what were the barriers to people even seeking out care in the first place. And so it was kind of that process of, of exploration, of trying to understand why, why do we still have so many health disparities and what could be done about that?

And shouldn't we be taking responsibility for that in healthcare instead of just seeing one sick patient after the next. It felt unsustainable. It started to feel like we have to do this a different way. So it's almost a sense of urgency of, of needing to do this a different way. So in that process of exploration was just a lot of both talking to a lot of people in the community, which ended up assembling this think tank that you spoke of earlier, uh, of people who were like-minded, but also trying to understand the same issues and really looking at quite a bit of data, looking at a lot of maps.

Of Oakland and really trying to understand what was the state of health within our community and why were there still so many disparities, whether you look at racial disparities, where African Americans were topping the list of most of the conditions that we are concerned about, but also geographically where I really started to hone in on East Oakland as an area that had some of the most significant sort of poor health outcomes.

And just really looking at those maps, it was just very striking to me that the same exact neighborhoods will light up for the same, for different things. So whether it was about diabetes or whether it was about ER visits for asthma, or whether it was premature death, whether it was probation parole, whether it was school suspensions or poverty itself, the map just sort of lights up in the same exact place.

And when I started to really dig into this and realize I could go back to a map of 1929 and see the redlining with the exact same neighborhoods. So then it starts to become very, very clear that these are structural issues and that these are issues that have been created and have been maintained. And so it really sort of led to my realization at least, that we have to start addressing these structures and we actually have to create alternative structures in order for community to really access all of the things that they need for wellness and good health.

And really that's how kind of the idea for Roots was born.

[00:11:17] George Koster: Thank you. That was a, a great background and I wanna turn to you, Aquil, and ask you to provide the audience really an overview of what I would consider to be a really holistic approach to healthcare. And then also, you know, what's really wonderful is that you've, you've also wrapped workforce and enterprise around health.

[00:11:37] George Koster: So if you could share with the audience just really the various programs that Roots Community Health Center provides

[00:11:44] Aquil Naji: the after our think tank, the second step after our think tank was to develop our system and structure. And as Dr. Aboelata used to be in the exam room and she did more than physical medicine, she was in our research mode and she was finding out why our community members were in her exam room.

[00:12:04] Aquil Naji: So she came out from her research. And unequivocally determined that the most reasons that black member in there were for hypertension and those things of those natures, which were the barriers to, that were put up, that kept them from the, our economy, our financial systems, for them to earn a living and take care of the responsibilities.

[00:12:28] Aquil Naji: So once she came out there with the information, we decided to put this, and early on we knew that we needed workforce development, some sort of social enterprise, somewhere where we can fill the gap where our society and our school systems have let our communities down. Meaning that our school systems, before when I was a senior in high school, it meant that I was going to, and it was, this was absolute an American dream.

[00:12:53] Aquil Naji: I was going to IR respected me being black or poor or wherever I was, that I would go to university, I would go to military or I would go to trade school. Trade school was a godsend for the black community and this is what afforded the black community to have a house and raise their family and have minimum wage, which is a mis known they should change the word.

[00:13:13] Aquil Naji: And so from there we started to build our workforce enterprises, which we have as a manufacturing facility. We have a sign shop, a sign manufacturing installation shop, which we have apprenticeships and these money generating vehicles, and most of them are subsidized because we have these apprenticeships and we mimic what we used to have in the sixties in the seventies, which we knew worked.

[00:13:36] Aquil Naji: And I don't know why they took 'em from us, so we don't jump up and down and screaming that they took them from us. We just build capacity back and recreate what we know works. We're not trying to reinvent the wheel. We know it works. And our workforce development is our, is one of the keys to help our marginalized members and those who are impoverished out of the situation.

[00:13:56] Aquil Naji: We have programs that we help and initiatives. It's more initiatives than programs because we've been in programs for the last a hundred years. So we have initiatives that drives the individual who's able bodied ready and willing to work. And most of these people that we speak of, they're just down in their luck.

[00:14:13] Aquil Naji: They need somebody to reach down and help them up and help them back into our economies, and we're very successful at that. And we're driven by our mission. So inside of this, doctor Abata created this. This model, the whole health model, it just meant more than your sore feet. It meant that your mental health, your financial wellbeing, your housing, how you treated your neighbors anti-violence, there's a lot encompassed in this whole health model.

[00:14:40] Aquil Naji: And the whole health means just that our community as a at at whole will be healthier for it. There will be less interaction for the police bladder. There will be less illiteracy in the children for the adults we're speaking of. Because if we empower the adults, that means this next generation, we can look forward to them building our communities the way we see fit for us, that we can live these lives out loud and be happy and free and have safe spaces and safe communities.

[00:15:08] Aquil Naji: We can't do it by ourselves. We lean into the people who we help. We lean into the community at large and, and let them know that there is help here we are here and we listen to them and we use their voices. And outside of that, we use the well-meaning members of our society who are willing and able, and willing to help us do this work.

[00:15:28] Aquil Naji: This is tough work, but we're committed to it. Even in the absence of financial support, we're very clear of how to keep this work moving, you know? And, and, and staying with that for a moment, for folks who are listening to the show, how would someone get engaged in participating in the social enterprise workforce program?

[00:15:46] Aquil Naji: We have, it all depends on what you mean by that. If you would like to be a participant, there's an admin button. It's admin@rootsclinic.org, and our workforce initiative is called the emancipators. We have people knock on the door, everybody, and you do have to qualify to get in because you do have to be able bodied ready, willing to work, and even at you are negated from that.

[00:16:06] Aquil Naji: We will work on you and work on your social ills until you can become in that position. Even if it doesn't mean that you get to go in our program or our initiative, we will get you somewhere on the pathway to health and wellness, the, and if you would like to volunteer or give us your expertise because we have a lot of professionals in the communities that can really help us sustain this thing and build the capacity so we can sustain it for generations to come.

[00:16:32] Aquil Naji: So it's very important that those well minded people, those who do want to help, just hit the admin button at Roots and we'll communicate back with you and we can best see how you, you can fit and you can help us. And we do need help because ass, our economies go in the tank. The populations that we help rise.

[00:16:48] Aquil Naji: There's more and more people at our front doors. Now our front door is kind of mimicking Ellison Island and it's not getting any better and staying with that for a moment, can you provide the audience an example of someone who's participated in a program, worked at, for example, Hamilton Broadway Signs, or at the Clean 360, and then been able to transition out of that work and actually find work in the private sector or the nonprofit or government center sector?

[00:17:15] Aquil Naji: I had a young man, he was 24. He started here. He had no soft skills, no hard skills. He had no skills. As we brought him in to apprenticeship, he had a desire to be some type of graphic design. 'cause we have graphic design and in the sign shop it's graphic design, sign manufacturing installation. We're even in the 49 ERs stadium.

[00:17:34] Aquil Naji: Just to give you a purview of this. And we, we acquired the oldest sign shop in Oakland, which was Hamilton, Broadway Science. Not trying to get a plug view, but that's what it is. The young man comes in. His, actually, his mother brings him in. And then I had a conversation with the mother to excuse the mother and let this young man be on his journey and she trusted her son with us.

[00:17:56] Aquil Naji: We assessed him, I, I connected him with a navigator. And a navigator would deal with his mental health, his physical health, his financial being, his education, where he lives at. Is he safe, is he threatened? Is he a part of a gang or whatever it is of that, the myriad of social deals. Our navigators, I was community health worker navigators.

[00:18:15] Aquil Naji: We'll identify what his issues are and while he's in the theater of his apprenticeship, they are dealing with that and they have to come in, in and out of the theater. He works in, they come in in and out frequently to make sure that he's on track and they get signatures and they give him and make sure he got his driver's license.

[00:18:33] Aquil Naji: So while they doing that work, we're training him. So this kid, I think this one kid stayed with us for like nine months and we built some really huge skills up with us. He works for a hospital system in San Francisco right now, based on the skills that we gave him and we trained him with. And then even when he applied for it, he had a reference and the reference came in.

[00:18:51] Aquil Naji: And we had a conversation with HR and this kid has a job and I think he makes almost $40 an hour with benefits, a young kid. And we do the same thing with adults, and we're a second chance employer. And if you are willing to go through the work and do the hard work to reinvent yourself and get yourself back up and going, we will be there for you till the wheels fall off.

[00:19:11] Aquil Naji: We're gonna be there for you. And then just a little clarity for the audience. Second chance, meaning someone who's come out of our prison industrial complex. Yeah. If you've been incarcerated or if you've had some behavioral break or you've just been uneducated. Undereducated. I got a kid this morning. He walked in the door today and we, our partner who lives up under our same roof, I got them to walk him down the street and get him in the GED class.

[00:19:36] Aquil Naji: He's on his way because he asked for it. He is on his way. So this is what I mean. You gotta be able bodied, rallying and ready and willing and speak the truth to what you need for yourself and we can help you get there. And we do. Great. Thank you. Thank you for the story as well. I really appreciate it. An example, Ky' I'm gonna turn to you and just ask you to share with the audience your work within the health and wellness, you know, services.

[00:19:57] Aquil Naji: I know you're transitioning to medical school and I want to come back to that in a second of the why behind all that, but please share with us. So your work.

[00:20:04] Ky'Tavia Stafford-Carreker: Definitely, I will say I love Roots so much. When I even got hired that I was bugging Dr. Noha nonstop about jobs. So I got actually hired at three different positions at Roots and chose my job that I have.

[00:20:15] Ky'Tavia Stafford-Carreker: 'cause I was gonna be like a COVID clinic supervisor and help run popup sites in the community in downtown San Jose. So I work at a South Bay site and there's like also Oakland site. So like, you know, we're really across the Bay area and we were really spread. So I started working the COVID clinics, running those, you know, hundreds of people getting tests and then switching to vaccines and, you know, that type of fast paced work.

[00:20:33] Ky'Tavia Stafford-Carreker: But they knew I wanted to be a doctor. So they started getting involved in random clinic tasks, like uploading notes into patient's charts, you know, updating referrals, like small things using the electronic health system, like kind of like getting my feet wet and like, you know, talking to providers, like getting each of those type of things.

[00:20:47] Ky'Tavia Stafford-Carreker: And then like when the referral coordinator left, they were like, Hey. I want you to learn everything about referrals and like referrals. Like when you send a patient to get a mammogram or for gastroenterology, they need a colonoscopy or you know, plastic surgery. If they maybe want a breast reduction, like, you know, sending patients to different places to get their needs taken care of.

[00:21:03] Ky'Tavia Stafford-Carreker: Or in some cases really dire, like podiatry, they might, they have a foot ulcer they really need to get seen. There was not really any much structure to my job when I got it. And I think it's been really rewarding seeing how much patients have been able to get seen by other providers since I've got there.

[00:21:16] Ky'Tavia Stafford-Carreker: And like creating a structure and seeing how easy it's for the providers to take care of our patients. And being able to mediate for Spanish speaking patients when they're turned down at offices or being able to yell at insurances when they're not trying to cover, prevent preventative care, like mammograms, like that's not allowed and or you know, being just willing to talk to anybody and just be that voice for our patients and marginalized folks that they need.

[00:21:36] Ky'Tavia Stafford-Carreker: 'cause you know, it's like, I'm like, it's my job people. Like, I'm so sorry, I'm like, you know, you don't, not to apologize to me. Like I understand. I can't imagine how you feel being frustrated and being told this, or you know, being told that your needs don't matter. So it's just kind of like, in some ways my job.

[00:21:48] Ky'Tavia Stafford-Carreker: Gone beyond my COVID clinic slash referral coordinator role. And sometimes I had to yell at other physicians, not yell well. Like, you know, Hey, can you take our patient? This guy had a stroke. Why are denying my referral? So having to advocate for my patients and when it's uncomfortable because I'm not a doctor yet and it's hard talking to a neurologist and people who are up there and all this experience and, and expand.

[00:22:04] Ky'Tavia Stafford-Carreker: I know it's approved so you know, it, it gets done. So that's, that's been like the rewarding work at Roots and seeing the patients like be really sad when I'm leaving and people wanting to call me personally and things like that. So I'm kind of heartbroken and that's why I wanna always keep my home at Roots.

[00:22:16] Ky'Tavia Stafford-Carreker: But yeah, that's kinda like a little bit of what I do. I just like to organize stuff like from back of the door documents and making sure patients have information.

Yeah,

[00:22:24] Ky'Tavia Stafford-Carreker: I just like to help and in whatever way that can be needed. And that's why I really like Bruce. 'cause I feel like it allows you to do that for the community.

[00:22:30] Ky'Tavia Stafford-Carreker: And I think like I have grown so much at my time here. And I definitely feel way more prepared than not to be like my peers, but a lot of my peers are like, oh my God, I don't know anything about insurance. I'm like, I don't know that much, but I know how messy it is. So I feel like I have this, uh, a step ahead of a lot of people 'cause of the tangible community health work experience that I have.

[00:22:46] Ky'Tavia Stafford-Carreker: So I'm thankful.

[00:22:47] George Koster: And your work at Roots has led you to apply to medical school. Can you share a little bit about that as well?

[00:22:53] Ky'Tavia Stafford-Carreker: Definitely. So I started this journey because I got into a post-doc program at UCSF, and then something happened to where my transcripts and my timing of my classes didn't match up.

[00:23:03] Ky'Tavia Stafford-Carreker: And they're like, Hey, you can't do the program anymore. And I was like, oh my God, I need a job. So I found roots and really was so enthralled by their experience, their goals, and what they went to do for the community. And I knew I wanted to still become a doctor. I was like in a postdoc program as a program that prepares you for medical school, quote unquote.

[00:23:19] Ky'Tavia Stafford-Carreker: So I was like, okay, I need to like better myself in some way as an applicant. So that's why I came to Roots. And I was working full-time, you know, doing COVID clinics, doing flashcards for my mcat, like while I'm registering people for COVID-19 testing and vaccines or checking them out or like, you know, listening to podcasts while I'm swabbing or you know, getting swabs and bags and organizing things.

[00:23:37] Ky'Tavia Stafford-Carreker: So I did my whole application process the whole year long while I was at root. So I was working pretty much except for two to three weeks where I took a break for my eight hour long exam I had to take. And the application process, I applied about like 20 schools and then finished about 10 of my secondary applications.

[00:23:53] Ky'Tavia Stafford-Carreker: And I got into eight schools, which was outstanding. And I was shocked, honestly. People were like, oh my God, you know, you should have expected that. But I wasn't, 'cause people usually applied three to four times to get into one medical school and I was honored to have been wanted so desperately having to turn down interviews.

[00:24:07] Ky'Tavia Stafford-Carreker: It was just a dream come true, honestly. And then to get like a full ride at like my dream school, Charles Drew, UCLA and to have a school UCSF match it, which was really like groundbreaking. So I felt very excited by the process. Tired but happy that I got to work and be get fulfilling work while I was through the process.

[00:24:24] Ky'Tavia Stafford-Carreker: I have friends who just work in retail and I'm like, no, I can get some inspiration for my patients to push through because I did wanna quit sometimes. But I feel like Roots definitely kept me in there just by sometimes wearing me out as well.

[00:24:34] George Koster: Thank you. Really wonderful story. And it sounds like your entire experience with Roots has inspired you to take this on new adventure.

[00:24:41] George Koster: I wanna turn back to, uh, Dr. Aboelata and IL as well. Could you please kind of walk us through, I mean, roots just started with one center and you've expanded, and now recently you're expanded, uh, some more. So could you talk a little bit about your growth and expansion goals for Roots?

Sure I can kind of give a little background.

I mean, we started literally as a mobile volunteer operation, so myself and Nurse Phi along would drive around to different locations and provide care on site. And we did that for the first few years. And so then in 2011 we got our first little room, like just one little room in the location where we are now.

And then we kind of grew a little bit from there. We, we hired our first employee in 2013, so we were all volunteer operation from 2008 to 2013, and then hired our first person. And now we're at about 210 full-time staff. We have three full scope primary care locations, two in East Oakland and one in San Jose.

And we also have many additional satellite sites. We have our two workforce sites. We have two clinics that are located in youth shelters in downtown Oakland. We have a navigation site in San Jose that will be a clinic. We're going to be expanding that soon. And then we have our mobile clinic, which is our Stomp Street Medicine, our street team outreach medical program that goes out to a physician led team that goes out to the homeless encampments in East Oakland and provides medical care to Oakland's unsheltered folks.

And then we have the new community center, which we are going to be officially opening very soon here in the next few weeks. And really part of that expansion had to do with during the pandemic where we had to really expand our clinical operations and also kind of pivot of course, like all of us had to do a lot of our activities that we used to do in person.

So we kind of displaced some of our early childhood spaces and our group spaces in order to do more what really was, you know, crisis work. I mean, we, we took over our conference room and made it into where people got their PPE and did their donning and doffing every day. We had to expand some of the clinics so that we would have, you know, ample space for folks to spread out given kind of the need for distancing and spacing.

And we realized that we sort of needed a place to do COVID safe gathering and activities because for so many members of our community. The Zoom wasn't gonna work. Group mental health treatment, you know, it wasn't gonna work for everyone online. And so we basically acquired this community center in the area of East Oakland that we really focus.

All of our neighborhood based work is really focused on this area of East Oakland. And a big part of our plan is for generations to come. So when people ask about like five years and 10 years, we're talking like five generations and 10 generations. And part of that is about actually acquiring spaces and places in our community where people can have very low barrier to access services and programs and resources that they may need.

And so the community center is, there's more outdoor space than indoor space. So as the COVID medical director, I'm very. Excited about being able to provide COVID safe activities. Aquil can talk about, you know, some of the ways that we've made it state of the art for both the technology to allow for both remote engagement and in-person engagement, which is also a COVID safety measure.

And also just in terms of really making it a space that can be safe for everyone in our community. So we'll be able to do our in-person early learning, our early childhood work, and a lot of that is really out of recognition that we have to start as early as possible. Of course, we start with pregnant moms too, but in terms of interrupting what we know is a school to prison pipeline within our community and wanting to make sure that all of our young people have the best possible start.

So we'll have our early childhood programming there. We'll be able to resume a lot of our in-person groups like our diabetes groups and our behavioral health groups, and just a lot of community activities. We'll be able to do all kinds of engagement, including some of our. Popup markets where people can get fresh food and really just access all of the different services that we have, our benefits, enrollment, and just all of the ways to get linked in.

And then if they need to be seen in our clinic or for behavioral health. Our full scope primary care clinic is just about five blocks down the street, and so we'll be able to connect people easily into all the other services that we provide, but it's sort of a way for us to be able to decompress right out and also to really be in a new neighborhood within our East Oakland kind of focus area and be able to bring new programs and services there.

[00:29:26] George Koster: You're listening to Voices of the Community, which explores critical issues facing Northern California communities. Voices of the Community is supported by a grant from the James Irvine Foundation dedicated to a California where all low income workers have the power to advance economically more@irvine.org.

[00:29:46] George Koster: This is George Koa, your host, and if you're just joining us in this episode, we're discussing how the COVID-19 pandemic continues to impact our community healthcare organizations with Roots Community Health Center, whose founder Dr. Noha Abta is a 2022 recipient of the James Irvine Foundation Leadership Award.

[00:30:07] George Koster: Associate producer Eric Estrada attended the award ceremony and groundbreaking of Roots Community Health Center's, miles Armistead Community Center in East Oakland, California, where he asked Mayor of the city of Oakland Libby Shaft to share her thoughts about Dr. Aboelata and the work of Roots Community Health Center.

[00:30:28] Eric Estrada: So Eric Estrada from Voices of the Community here with Mayor Libby Schaf, and I wanted to ask you, how would you describe Roots Impact on the community?

[00:30:35] Mayor Libby Schaaf: Profound, beautiful, inspirational, powerful. The way roots approaches health is how we all most approach health. It's not just about the individual's body, it's about their spirit, their mind, their soul, and it's about the whole community and the systems that have embedded.

[00:30:59] Mayor Libby Schaaf: Injust and unhealthy outcomes, particularly for black, brown, bipoc people.

[00:31:06] George Koster: Let's get back to our conversation with Dr. Valletta, Aquil and Ky about their work to bring healthcare as well as economic and community development to our Oakland community members. Nikhil, would you like to add more to the Miles Armstead community center that you just did the ribbon cutting last week as part of the James Irvine Community Awards?

[00:31:27] George Koster: I've been talking to other community partners and chief got some of the, the crown jewels. At this place we're gonna have a chess club, the East Oakland Chess Club, and then I'm having discussions with some other community partners that put a music school in there for the children. And on Sundays we, we are gonna have a driving range before the 50 and above that they get to come out on Sunday mornings after church and drive a few balls and hang out and chit chat and have some community space.

[00:31:51] George Koster: But this is ground zero for anti-violence in East Oakland. This is our attempt and opportunity to push back on those things that have been hurting us so bad and we're pushing, we're not gonna retreat, we're pushing. We will heal our community from within. Dr. Aboelata created that tagline a long time ago of that Roots Community Health Center.

[00:32:13] George Koster: We heal our community from within. So this is our attempt. Instead of waiting for help, let's create the help and let's have all the rest of the community members join in and let's fix what's not right. And East Oakland, we can do it. We can do it. Even if you don't live in East Open, you can help us fix what's not right here.

[00:32:31] George Koster: And this is our, this center right here is we're, this is at the beginning of our push and I have some other people who's joining in and we're gonna push really hard, but we are going to heal this community. Like it or not, people don't like it. We're gonna heal this place and I'm, I'm dead set on it.

[00:32:45] George Koster: We're gonna heal it and you'll routinely find me in front of the liquor store, my Brooks Brothers suit. On the milk crate, talking to these young men, getting them to change how they use their time. Most of 'em are very good young men too. They just need an opportunity and they are really struck by this guy walking up in this Brooks Brothers suit, talking to them, offering him opportunities.

[00:33:06] George Koster: I got four so far. Two of 'em are with us and two of 'em with other organizations. And this is our commitment to this community. We're gonna heal this community from within.

And that's why, you know, I forgot, that's why I forgot the chess club, because some of this is asking the community, what do you want to see here?

We're still really very much in that process. And so we had our first sort of block party event after the James Irvine award, dedication of the building, and we're still asking community, what things do you wanna see here? We're having listening sessions and other ways to engage with the community to find out what other things we're going to be having there.

So we're still populating the calendar, but it really truly is there for the community and to serve the needs of the community that we're in.

[00:33:46] George Koster: Interesting with you, Dr. Aboelata. So we've been in, you know, in the pandemic two plus years, how has COVID-19 really impacted the Center's work? And I think the, the follow on to that is what do you feel like doctors could do better to build relationships and treatment?

Those are both big questions. When the pandemic came, we sort of knew just almost instinctively like, we are gonna have to get in front of this because nobody else is coming to save us. Nobody is going to be coming to our community to be specifically ensuring that they have the resources and the information.

So we mobilized very quickly and we actually set up the first walk up testing site in the whole Bay Area, and that was in April, 2020. And we've been testing really three times a week at that site ever since. And we've been testing. Both in Oakland and San Jose, really on a consistent basis, this entire pandemic, we then we set up for vaccination, we're also treating.

And so we've really had to stay at the forefront with this pandemic because our communities have been disproportionately hit. And we, we knew that before it, before it unfolded because we already know about the other disparities that we deal with. We already knew that our community was disproportionately going to be living in more crowded households, being essential workers, taking public transportation, so all the things that put them at increased risk of actually contracting COVID.

And then we also knew that our community at greater risk of poor outcomes because of the underlying conditions that they may have, diabetes, high blood pressure, et cetera. So we really took that responsibility on and we were sort of quick out of the gate to be able to provide these services. And so we were.

Testing. And in the beginning of course it was just overwhelming how much testing. And so what we really took very seriously was also our role in terms of understanding what was happening and being able to explain that back out to the community. So we had just this wealth of data that we were collecting, that we were able to help inform the community what we were seeing.

And so we were able to say, Hey, we're seeing more outbreaks in people in the construction industry, or Hey, we're seeing more outbreaks in this particular neighborhood. And we were a actually able to use that information and in partnership with many other organizations. Advocate for things like not reopening the first time when, you know, when things were just starting to really take off in our community and where we were having major outbreaks in East Oakland and there was all this pressure to reopen.

And so we were able to advocate, Hey, wait, we need to pause for a minute until we make sure that everyone's okay and that everyone really understands what's going on. And we've been able to successfully advocate for, for different things around masking guidelines and making sure that our children in school are better protected.

And a big part of that ability to be advocates has to do with how closely connected we are to the data on the ground and hearing from folks on the ground as to what's needed and what they're experiencing. And I think the other thing that it really kind of forced us to do was to figure out ways to communicate more broadly with our community.

And so it's not just about the people walking in our doors, but it is about everyone who's touching us in any way and anyone who wants to get information that's really rooted in our communities and in a way that's relatable. So we've really had to scale up, I think, in a number of areas. And one of those actually is just this health communication and how important it is to be able to deliver information to people in a way that is understandable and relatable and that they can act upon it.

And so that's another way that I think it's impacted us in some ways. We never closed the door. We, we didn't have a day where we shut down and said, you know, here's the pandemic. We need to, we need to close. And so many others did. And so early on, I think we really were able to show up as a reliable source of care for our patients.

Even though we had a change. You know, how we did certain things. We never closed the door, not for one day. And so I think, so in some ways nothing changed, right? In the sense that, and I, what I mean by that is the core of our work did not change the fact that we need to show up and be here for our community and know that we're gonna be disproportionately impacted.

Those were things that we were grappling with, with other things, right? With mental health. With folks becoming houseless and unsheltered, we, we've always tried to stay really at the forefront. And so in some ways that didn't change at all. The fact that there were disparities we were trying to prevent, that's the work that we do.

The fact that all of a sudden everyone started to talk about, you know, systemic inequities and systemic racism and that since day one. So in a lot of ways, a lot of these revelations and things that were happening, I feel like in some ways for the rest of the country, for those of us that are steeped in this work.

Nothing changed about what we needed to do in terms of, you know, how we were approaching the work. But obviously the day to day, everything was just sort of turned upside down, turned on its head, and the volume, just the sheer magnitude of need and how much we had to scale up to address that need and be able to be flexible and nimble to respond.

Our teams are. Unbelievable. Just absolutely incredible. People who never questioned, you know, this is what we need to do. Where's my PPE? What do I need to do? How do I need to do it? And folks just stepped up and did what needed to be done and still continue to, I think, really just be absolutely passionate and compassionate and, and also firm because I think we also are continuing to be in this pandemic it, it isn't going anywhere anytime soon anyway.

And we've had to be very consistent in the messages that we're telling to our community, but also our own internal, how we're approaching this pandemic and the seriousness. Which with, with which we are approaching it because we don't want any one of our staff to be affected or our, our families, our households or our community members.

And we take that responsibility very, very seriously. So we continue to provide those services. We've done like over 45,000 COVID tests. We've administered over 20,000 COVID vaccines, and we clearly opened up to more than just our patients, so you don't have to be a roots patient to be able to access these COVID services.

And so that was something that I think was really important for us to do because just like I was describing from the early Days of Roots, it was never about, oh, we need x number of patients that we take care of. It was about, we're concerned about our people, we're concerned about our community, we're concerned about our population.

And so that is the, that's kind of the responsibility that I feel like our entire team took on during the pandemic and continues to do.

[00:40:18] George Koster: Thank you. That was, that was really wonderful. I wanna turn to Ky' and since you know you were on the front lines of this, could you share one of your favorite stories during the, the last two years of working really on the front lines with COVID, with your community members, patients, et cetera?

[00:40:34] Ky'Tavia Stafford-Carreker: So hard to pick one story. And these are actually stories I actually write, wrote about my essays too, 'cause they were just so impactful. But there was something that was really profound to me while people were having debates and politicizing vaccinations that, you know, keep people alive on the like front lines and talking to people who were getting registered.

[00:40:50] Ky'Tavia Stafford-Carreker: There was a man like one of the first weeks that we had vaccines available and he told me like, my mom rushed me to the front for the polio vaccine and I'm here today. You know, and even though he was a little nervous, like, I'm nervous, but I'm excited. And I feel like that was really profound. I was a history major in high school, so I feel like it's important to recognize that history lives with us and one not to also repeat it, um, if possible.

[00:41:09] Ky'Tavia Stafford-Carreker: So just to see. How, you know, somebody was excited then of something new and maybe a little bit scary, but the benefits were so powerful that they took that risk. And just to have that person share their piece of like their story and that legacy was really impactful. And there's just a billion stories that can go off and on, but that was something that really, really stuck with me just seeing how things are similar but yet different.

[00:41:31] Ky'Tavia Stafford-Carreker: There's like lots of different continuities within medicine and it was nice to be able to get that gentleman the opportunity to get his vaccine so early.

[00:41:38] George Koster: Thank you. Great story Il. I wanna turn back to you and ask if you could just share with the audience what value does Roots bring to the community?

[00:41:47] George Koster: And along that same lines, what do you feel has been the biggest impact on the community that Roots has had? What I feel that Roots brings as a whole is that we address some of the systemic issues, some of the social ills, and we fill the gap and not wait. And we are a real resource. We are the at the forefront of the argument of equity.

[00:42:08] George Koster: Well, the intellectuals and the politicians and the banks and everybody talk about what equity is and they're trying to come up with a definition and how to fix it. We are here right now dealing with it today. We are addressing it. We create methodologies to give people some sense of equity, even if it may not be equitable, but we, we will give them some access that they can have a fair, balanced life.

[00:42:32] George Koster: Like the white, blue, a green man, and black people struggle with a bunch of different things, and a lot of it is theoretical outside of the community, but this is reality and roots addresses the reality in this community every moment of the day. Sometimes in the middle of the night and our communication portals never give up.

[00:42:52] George Koster: The flow of requests and information is constantly coming in, and we have a lot of well-meaning intellectuals out there to help us build capacity and support us and moving forward. Roots is also given these tools that we build because we know that we have to sustain what we do. And one of those ways we sustain is just our social procurement and our workforce enterprises and our sign shop and those type of things.

[00:43:18] George Koster: We approach anchor institutions. The anchor institutions goes to Texas or New York to buy their widgets, and we try to implore them to spend your dollars with our systems here with the, and those are just not roots. It's a lot of local people. So we speak up at all the entrepreneurs here and ask the anchor institutions to buy our widgets.

[00:43:37] George Koster: It's the same widgets that you go to Texas and buy, that you go to New York and buy. Sometimes you may pit a PAYE a little bit more, but roots, we advocate for all of the entrepreneurs here. All of the small businesses here. These small businesses are families. Even our social enterprises. We support a lot of families.

[00:43:55] George Koster: So this is what Roots does. Roots builds capacity, and we message those, the stakeholders and those with the finances and the tools to support the work that we do because we know that we can only stick our hands out and ask for donations for so long. So we do have to lean in on us, and we are building models that we can support ourselves too.

[00:44:15] George Koster: But donations are fine and it helps us build capacities because we're not there yet. We're not there yet, but we are gonna get there. But we have to, the roots we speak up for, for the entire community. From the kindness of others to help support the work in our communities. Even if you're not gonna support Roots, support other organizations who are doing this like type work to help human beings live a better life.

[00:44:37] George Koster: Thank you. And staying with you Aquil, could you share with the audience, you know, folks who are listening to the show and maybe listening to the podcast and radio show, how can they get engaged in supporting, you know, roots efforts in the community? Can they, obviously they're making a donation. Can folks become mentors?

[00:44:53] George Koster: Can folks be an employer, for example, and employ some of the interns that are coming out of the social enterprises? How can folks get engaged?

[00:45:03] Aquil Naji: There's several different ways, and one of 'em just hit me what you just said. A lot of our, uh, apprentices. We deal with a lot of their social issues. So when a lot of the apprentices leave here, they are work ready, ready to go, and they won't, they will not cost another employer or another dime so they're ready to enter to anybody's system.

[00:45:20] Aquil Naji: So one of the ways that the general public can help, if you're looking for people that we train and we, we try not to send people into a minimum wage jobs. So if you want to really help a man or a woman, you can reach out to us and we'll, we'll give you a list of some of the people that we have or we can send them over or interview in that process.

[00:45:39] Aquil Naji: And then we also, like, we have a lot of intelligent people, well-meaning intelligent people who have skill sets that we can use to help us scale up. 'cause a lot of times if we are trying to change a system or, or reinvent a system, it costs money to do that for the consultants. So nothing is off the table.

[00:45:55] Aquil Naji: If anybody would really like to contribute or you can help, you can help with your expertise. You can help put your money, your time, and even now we are building because now our economy is changing, our community is changing, and we are in a position now to go out and try to build capacity as far as acquiring real estate before it's unattainable.

[00:46:18] Aquil Naji: That's what we can really use help with. Especially from advised donors. Advised donors is they're, they're magical to me because they help us build these capacities for the future. And this is the, we have, we do have a five generation plan, but it requires us to own property. It really does. Like the Armstead Center, we didn't leverage for that.

[00:46:39] Aquil Naji: We took our coins and put it together and purchase that thing. We rehabbed it, put $600,000 in the coins we pulled together. So the other ask is for the communities, especially those, we have a lot of community members who have done well for themselves, a bravo for you, but inside of your estate planning, you know, we can use real estate to build these modules inside of these troubled communities.

[00:47:01] Aquil Naji: And that was my biggest ask. And we have, uh, advised donors who come in and, and I know how the advised donor world works and I really appreciate them. And the, that piece would really help, especially for our future, for the future of the community. And so if Someone was listening, how would they get in contact?

[00:47:19] Aquil Naji: If you could just go to admin@rootsclinic.org and just state it, state your, your case, how you would like to help, and we'll reach out to you immediately. And that is very important that we do sustain the work that we put in because these are public dollars we deal with and they've been entrusted to us and we operate a little differently.

[00:47:39] Aquil Naji: The health center when it comes to the trust that the public has placed upon us. I'm just an employee of this place. I've been here for a hundred years, but I'm just an employee of this place. And I feel this way too. But I believe in work. But we are stewards, we are stewards of the trust that the public has put in.

[00:47:55] Aquil Naji: We are building this thing for the public, not ourselves, for the public. So everything that we build, we use it to, we take out and we have a census in the community. We don't just create stuff out of our head and build stuff. We ask the community what's needed, and we build around the needs of the community.

[00:48:11] Aquil Naji: So real estate is really paramount for the survival of this community because the economies are changing and the developers are here. So some people like to use this word gentrification, but I focus on the change of the community as the developers are here buying land, building these enormous apartment buildings or whatever they're building, we need to participate in that too, to sustain ourselves in these communities so that the people who have been here for 50 years.

[00:48:36] Aquil Naji: And another 50 years, they can still be here right next to the developed sites who says they can't be here. So this is another one of our pushes and we need to support and the kindness of the community to help build this type of capacity.

[00:48:47] George Koster: Thank you. Really wonderful insights as well, and let's hope folks step up and reach out.

[00:48:51] George Koster: I'm gonna turn back to you, Dr. Aboelata and you've been there obviously since the founding, et cetera. Could you share with the audience one of your favorite stories of both creating the roots and the Roots community itself?

[00:49:03] Noha Aboelata, MD: Well, there's so many, but probably for me, I mean there's a couple things that for me, I just take a lot of pride in, I guess.

[00:49:10] Noha Aboelata, MD: And one would be, you know, really committing to our social enterprises with, you know, the full sort of backing of the board and you know, at the time, sort of the think tank and just those of us who recognize that, you know, health is not just about the absence of disease and it's really about people having hope and having opportunity and having support and being able to accomplish their goals.

[00:49:36] Noha Aboelata, MD: And so I just remember being the only physician at Roots in the beginning and being able to defer one of my patients who was having sort of these chronic pain and sort of depression, a little bit of substance issues and was, you know, had people telling 'em, you know, you should just get on disability.

[00:49:55] Noha Aboelata, MD: And I really, that was almost. Like an epidemic in our community in some ways, of people being told, well, well you're not gonna get hired anywhere anyway. You've got a felony, but you don't have these skills, you might as well just go get on disability. And I've seen how that goes for people who are not actually fully disabled, where they get more and more depressed and they actually become disabled at some point because they no longer have that hope.

[00:50:18] Noha Aboelata, MD: And that was something we were very committed to sort of intervening on with the social enterprises. And so I just remember, and it wasn't just one, I've had several, you know, people that. I was able to sort of refer them to a job and to training and to hope and to opportunity. And that's not a referral many physicians get to make.

[00:50:36] Noha Aboelata, MD: And so it's just a point of pride and a real, I think, depth of understanding at roots that these things are all integrated. We can't silo out the human, the head is over here and the bodies over there. We have to be thinking of these things in a much more integrated way. And so I have so many stories of folks who started as clients or members, recipients of our services who now hold manager roles and or who hold significant positions at Roots, where they oversee others and can be not only.

[00:51:06] Noha Aboelata, MD: Obviously support themselves and their families, but be that role model and that mentor for the next people. And so it's kind of that, that full circle, I feel like that is so much of what Roots does that, you know, that kind of transforming folks' lives. And so it's not just about me treating your diabetes, but it's really about if you come in and you're in a crisis situation in any of the domains of your life, it doesn't have to be a mental health crisis.

[00:51:32] Noha Aboelata, MD: It could be a housing crisis, it could be food insecurity, it could be that you are disconnected from family, you need to be reunited with. And so there's just so many, I mean, daily, there are stories literally of folks transformation by coming into Roots and really working with a navigator who coaches you and helps you to achieve your goals.

[00:51:53] Noha Aboelata, MD: And seeing that behavioral provider and really removing all the stigma around what it means to be able to get the support and help you need. Because you could get anything at Roots. You could be coming there to get food or to get. Signed up for Medi-Cal or to be finding a job or because you have HIV or because you have a mental health diagnosis.

[00:52:11] Noha Aboelata, MD: So basically really being able to be kind of like that one stop shop for folks in a way that's very non-stigmatizing. And I think another thing that is a point of pride for me is. People coming to Roots, uh, just to be there. Like they don't have an appointment that day. They just wanna be among folks that they feel like are family and they may be there, you know, a few times a week and you know, and it's a beautiful thing to see.

[00:52:39] Noha Aboelata, MD: And then I'm on the back end looking at the data and saying, since this person's been engaged with us, they haven't gone back to the jail. They haven't gone back to the psychiatric emergency department. They've been in our courtyard sitting there and chopping it up with folks. And so those are all things that, you know, feel probably very like non-traditional for a clinic or community health center.

[00:53:01] Noha Aboelata, MD: But that is really what is making a very profound impact, I think, in the lives of so many of the people that we touch.

[00:53:07] George Koster: So it's really all about the community itself. Building community.

Absolutely.

[00:53:11] George Koster: So, Kai's favorite story besides your friends of the Line, COVID story, you're now gonna transition to the next phase of your life.

[00:53:18] George Koster: What's a favorite story of being part of the Roots community?

[00:53:22] Ky'Tavia Stafford-Carreker: I would say I have like a relationship. I dealt with the patient who we got pretty close with as I just do referrals, but sometimes I make sure that patients get the information more than once. Like, Hey, I noticed you to go to your mammogram.

[00:53:34] Ky'Tavia Stafford-Carreker: Or like, Hey, there's this biopsy they wanted you to do after your mammogram is abnormal. But this patient came in kind of with something that the male from another hospital just sent them like, Hey, your mammogram is abnormal, we'll be calling you. Right? So like it was just very vague, kind of demoralizing.

[00:53:48] Ky'Tavia Stafford-Carreker: And that patient was really confused, like I kind of weighed on hold with them, et cetera. So long story short, we got the patient, the biopsy, and unfortunately, um, that patient was diagnosed with breast cancer and that was really difficult because like, as Dr. Noha was mentioning, patients that just come in and chop it up or patients who like just come to visit or like just say, Hey, I wanted to hug you, or you know, I just wanna, or patients you say, I love you too.

[00:54:07] Ky'Tavia Stafford-Carreker: And you're like, yeah, I love you too. You know, I love you back. And that patient was one of those. So it was like really hard because she brightened up our days and it was really hard to see a person who you have cared for and care about so much go through that, right? And being able to have that person tell you they haven't told their daughter their diagnosis and venting to you about it and crying your arms, and being able to share that moment and just go in a room and talk to them and like, Hey, okay, like this is what you do first.

[00:54:28] Ky'Tavia Stafford-Carreker: Like, we're not gonna worry about staging like, you know. X, Y, Z, like let me help you get some resources for breast cancer support systems. Like there's an African American woman, zoom, let me help you get it. You know, there's some resources for money and obviously it's not my job description, but it's just like seeing somebody in that space.

[00:54:42] Ky'Tavia Stafford-Carreker: It's like, I just can't imagine how that feels. And I just wanted to be of any support, like, you know, as if it was my cousin, my aunt, and that person was also another former addict. And I shared a story about my aunt being an addict as well and how that was really impactful for me. And you know, seeing her growth and you know, seeing her sobriety and knowing how things like this can really detract everything and mess up your.

[00:55:00] Ky'Tavia Stafford-Carreker: Whole state of mind and just, you know, being willing to share space with her and seeing her now go through chemo and now it's in remission and is able to come back with good reports and has the cutest bald head ever. And I always compliment her on it and just making sure that she always feels good when she comes in.

[00:55:14] Ky'Tavia Stafford-Carreker: So I feel like that's a really impactful story. And actually, when I told her I got to UCLA Drew, she literally had like a whole like, oh my God. Like it was like a family member, like on the ground. Like, oh my God, thank you Jesus. Like it felt like my grandma, I told my grandma I got into UCLA, so it was just like seeing that reaction and I'm gonna miss you.

[00:55:29] Ky'Tavia Stafford-Carreker: You know, those type of thing. It, it is just been so crucial to me. So, although it's been a sad and you know, her diagnosis, I feel like it's been. It's very heartwarming and it's allowed us to build a really close bond to the point where I'm literally heartbroken and like hug her every time I see her.

[00:55:42] Ky'Tavia Stafford-Carreker: But yeah, that's just the type of interactions we'll get at Roots and it's very organic. Nobody told me, Hey Ky' give her this or do that, or pull her in the room and talk to her about this. It was just kind of like the type of what we've learned and how to maneuver around situations. It's just being me in the community where they're at and being resourceful and doing what you can and sometimes going between the margins and doing that hard work and being that shoulder to cry on literally, because that's what we're here for.

[00:56:04] George Koster: Thank you. That's a really wonderful story. And Keo, could you tell the audience a little, what are your favorite stories of working there at Roots, especially like your social enterprise story, but any, any story that you would like to to call up. I have a current story. She's a current member and I think she comes here four days a week and she was currently living up under the sky and she's always been well-meaning, and that it, she kept a smile on her face, but I can see behind frowns and smiles and I knew something was there.

[00:56:32] George Koster: Talked to her navigator just to find out what she was going through. And a lady was living up under the sky and now about a half mile away from her. She has a wonderful one bedroom apartment. We fully furnished it for her from one of our funding sources and now she's here five days a week. And I think she just got a job too.

[00:56:51] George Koster: 'cause we supported her in that. And that was, that kind of validates the reason I'm here. Thank you. I always love hearing folks who go from being unhoused to being housed. It's housing first. It's housing. All about housing. First, I'm gonna turn to our final question for everybody and start with you, Dr. Aboelata. If you could share with the audience, what do you feel are some of the good things that have come outta the pandemic to support roots work in the community, and I think more importantly, perhaps, of people's focus on our healthcare system and everything that's not there, perhaps.

Yeah, I think some of the good things that have come out of the pandemic have been unlikely partnerships and alignment.

I think it has been a time where many of us who maybe didn't collaborate much before or just barely knew of each other before are now meeting and talking on a regular basis out of need to support folks in the community. And so really being able to, I think, leverage one another's strengths and come together to really provide.

A more continuum, a better continuum, I think of care and services, I think has been an important thing that's come out of the pandemic. I think in some ways it's obviously positive that there's been sort of a recognition that we have some issues within healthcare and that there are systemic issues within healthcare systems that I feel unfortunately, at least today, a little less optimistic about where we're going with that.

I feel. Frustrated that much of the infrastructure, like data infrastructure that was built around the pandemic is kind of now retracting and sort of being dismantled. And that's frustrating because I was really hopeful that we were gonna decide that public health infrastructure was important again in this country.

I think one of the issues and one of the reasons why sort of came to some of the realizations that I did around what was missing, have to do with the fact that in this country we've really leaned so heavily on healthcare delivery and I think. It's great. We have world class delivery system and technology and treatments, and people come from other parts of the world to come to the United States to get these great, expensive, fancy treatments, and that's wonderful.

But our public health infrastructure is pretty anemic, and we see places in other parts of the world that actually for pennies on the dollar, have done so much more than this country's been able to do in the realm of public health. And that might be okay when you're not facing a pandemic or a crisis.

But it's never really been okay for our community because we look at the HIV pandemic and our community is still the one that is having new cases and is still having deaths while everyone else has sort of moved on and said. It's no longer a public health issue. People can get the, get the pills at their doctors and we're done here.

That leaves out communities like ours. And so community health and public health are really pretty interrelated and intertwined. And so I think I had hoped that with this pandemic, we would really be looking at ways to sort of build up our public health infrastructure. And I think in some ways it felt like we just kind of.

Taped it together and kind of hobbled along. And now we're kind of pulling it back apart again and going back to relying on our delivery system and only monitoring hospital capacity and things like that. And so I think that one of the things that has been highlighted that hopefully will stick with folks is the disparities and inequities.

But these are things that we've had for the history of this country and that have really been maintained, maintained by most of our systems. And so I think it's going to be a lot of work from the point of recognizing it's an issue to actually doing anything about it and not just sort of taking the easy way out.

And so I think one of the areas of work that's gonna be important for Roots in this kind of space is to ensure that when we say equity, that we're talking about the same things. We don't mean sort of tokenism or putting something somewhere and saying, we put something in a high risk neighborhood. We're done now.

But it is actually a real discipline and an ongoing process of centering the people who have been the most harmed and who are the most likely to be harmed. People who have been the most marginalized and the most likely to be marginalized and putting them at the center of our decision making and of our processes.

And that's what Roots has always done and will continue to do. And so I think we're gonna need to hold some accountability to others around just not saying, oh, we hired a diversity officer, we're done with equity. Now, that's not the same thing. And so I think that in some ways it makes our work harder, right?

Because you have people that sound like they're talking about the same thing, but they may not really actually be approaching this in the discipline way that it really, really does require. And it's not easy work. So I don't mean to pretend that it's easy work, but it's absolutely necessary work if we're ever going to sort of get to this point where people are not afraid to engage with healthcare.

They're not being harmed when they enter these institutions. They're not being mistreated when they enter these institutions. And so feel really blessed to have someone like Tvia and other just brilliant young people who come to Roots and realize. We gotta do this differently. And so the fact that she's already fought with insurance companies before she even got to medical school, I mean this, this makes me know we're doing something right Because a lot of the systems that we have in place can feel insurmountable, you know, and massive.

But to the extent that we have people going into medicine who understand the assignments, I think will be, will be better off.

[01:02:30] George Koster: Thank you. And Ky' turning to you, what do you feel has been some of the good things that have come out of the pandemic?

[01:02:35] Ky'Tavia Stafford-Carreker: Definitely. So I would say like before I go into that, I hate to like use the word like good.

[01:02:40] Ky'Tavia Stafford-Carreker: Sometimes I feel somewhat privileged considering there's just been so much loss during the pandemic, right? We know that there's been like more positive things and negative things. So I just wanna acknowledge like all the folks that we have lost or that are still struggling from side effects of COVID.

[01:02:51] Ky'Tavia Stafford-Carreker: But I will say, I think I can see how much the community came together during this whole timeframe, and I think that was really impactful. Like seeing a place like roots, like stand up and you know, we're out there and 95 degrees in PPE and that's what it is. You know, just 'cause people need tests and that's, you know, and knowing and having some other coworkers who had an issue with that, like, Hey, don't remember why you got hired.

[01:03:12] Ky'Tavia Stafford-Carreker: Remember why you chose to work here. We're here for the community. None of us are comfortable. We're all suffering, but like. We're just getting paid for this and we're nonetheless it's good work. Right? So I think, you know, seeing the communities, seeing how much we can do when we're pushed to the limit. I mean I think virtual things, although they can be inaccessible, has made a lot of things more accessible for patients.

[01:03:30] Ky'Tavia Stafford-Carreker: So I think we've kind of just learned a lot how to deliver information better. I would say one thing that was huge for me during the pandemic was like how people were just like told like get this vaccine or this is COVID and like all these big terms. Like I had the privilege of going to UCLA and I barely did my pre-med classes as well.

[01:03:46] Ky'Tavia Stafford-Carreker: So I have my own issues with knowing the mRNA is so, seeing people get thrown out, like big, big terms at them while I was working community really like. Kind of frustrated me. So seeing how sometimes we can use a lot of scientific jargon and, but with that, like on the other side, it allowed for me and others and other people in the community to create more accessible documentation or like explaining things in Spanish for patients so they can really understand.

[01:04:09] Ky'Tavia Stafford-Carreker: So we won't even know what the vaccine was against, right? Just because they've just been told to get something. And I think that's something that we should al always talk about. But I will say overall I think Roots has put me in a position to do these things and I think like a lot of my ideas and the way I feel comfortable or just having ideas, I think Roots provided that space and that light for me to feel comfortable to like spread my wings and maybe be in medical school and be like, Hey, I think this before I was kind of like a lot more quiet in my ideas or seeing how supportive, even if it doesn't work out, like we always try our best to just meet people where they're at.

[01:04:39] Ky'Tavia Stafford-Carreker: So I think there's like been some positive things I've seen and some things we can work on, but I feel like nonetheless, like Roots is right in there working on ourselves constantly re reinventing, um, ways to give information, serve patients and just serve the community in like a whole person care way.

[01:04:53] George Koster: Thank you, Anil. Turning to you, what do you feel are some of the positive things or not that have come out of the pandemic? I think there's several different things, but one that comes real mind. It really highlighted the cracks in our community and really the segregation in our society. East Oakland is a place of its own within a city.

[01:05:13] George Koster: It allowed people who would never dream of coming East Oakland, coming here to receive our kindness through a test. Vaccine and then it's, it also allowed us to really engage others who had some preset notion about East Oakland, and I think it helped bridge some gaps with some people. Then the other one is that it really strengthened our organization because once Dr. Aboelata decided we were gonna do this, we in operations logistically, I pulled out my mash playbook and we set up clinic outdoors under the sky, under the freeway, wherever we were needed, we went and we took full teams as if we took a 10,000 square foot building with us and we had everything we needed up under the freeway, under the sky, in our parking lot, wherever the community required us to be.

[01:06:03] George Koster: That's where we were, and it strengthened us and it strengthened our resolve in the work that we do really strengthened us as far as on that level of our commitment. It really accentuated it. It put the period on it, and I know this is why we're supposed to be here, and I would just hate to think what would happen if we were not here.

[01:06:19] George Koster: We're our people. So truly meeting the community where they're at. Absolutely. Okay, so I'm gonna turn to Eric who has a question.

[01:06:27] Eric Estrada: Yeah. So Akiel, and one of the things that you mentioned was that the Miles Armstead facility that you guys recently opened, which congratulations was, it was a you kind of like a community project.

[01:06:39] Eric Estrada: Correct. And so I'm curious to know, like, are you willing to partner up with like, you know, big tech companies or like other organizations like that to open more facilities? Like the Miles Armstead facility that you, that you did, or you know, is it something that you kind of want to keep within the community and no one else has a hand in it?

[01:07:00] George Koster: No. This is not who we are. We, this is why we do listening sessions. We knock on doors, we've knocked on thousands of doors for people around there. We invite everybody in to lift this. We are community based. This is for us all, even tech. We would love for tech to come in and help us lift this lift because we know tech has power.

[01:07:18] George Koster: And you can take this model. I can help you with the playbook and you can supplant this thing anywhere. Take it to Chicago, take it to New York, take it anywhere, take it to Europe, and I invite anybody in. I invite any and challenge anybody to come help out with this. This is a community center, and if you look up that word it, but this is belongs to the community.

[01:07:35] George Koster: We're stewards of the community. This belongs to the community. But yes, we will invite, we will take anybody's help and especially tech, because we know tech has logistical money and they can do it.

I wanted to just mention one other thing when you asked about how people can help and in addition to both supporting roots and the mission as well as hiring our graduates, I think another part is if you are a landlord and you have units available, we need to make it affordable for our community.

So many of our workers, you know, are, and our apprentices and so on, can afford. Rent in a normal market, but Oakland has gotten really out of reach for folks and commuting is now becoming super expensive as well. And so this is putting a lot of strain on, you know, frontline workers as well as the members that we serve.

And I really think for those who, and we have so many property owners in Oakland that are, you know, mom and pop property owners, but then we also have tech and others and folks that you know, are more larger developers. I think we all need to contribute to solving the issue of homelessness. And also I think being thoughtful about creating our networks where.

We can help refer qualified, good, solid tenants, but also wanting to make sure that it remains within reach for folks in our community. Likewise, if you are wanting to sell a piece of property, we would love to be able to know about it. It may be us, it may be some of our community partners, but we don't wanna see any more community assets, especially within East Oakland, become out of reach or be scooped up by folks who, who don't have our community members in mind.

And so this kind of preserving the assets that we do have as something of critical importance to us. And so we would want anyone sort of in those positions to be giving that some thought as well.

[01:09:32] George Koster: And to piggyback on what Dr. Aboelata just said, we have quite a few employees now who can no longer afford to live in this county, and they commute back every day to do the work that they do, and they're committed.

[01:09:41] George Koster: We have people who live in Stockton, Modesto, driving back to Oakland to do the work because this is spiritual work too sometimes for a lot of people. But they're committed. So to what Dr. Aboelata said, yes, please. That's great. So I wanna thank Dr. Aboelata and Akhil and Kai for sharing the work of Roots Community Health Center and its impact on our community.

[01:10:00] George Koster: We'll make sure that listeners have your contact information, website and social media so they can follow up with you and support your work as well as make a donation. Please stay safe and healthy as we all work our way through this latest surge of COVID-19, and we wish you all the best in a successful launch of the New Miles Armstead Community Center in East Oakland.

[01:10:18] George Koster: That's it for this episode of Voices to the Community. You've been listening to the voices of Dr. Noha Abta. The founder and CEO of Roots Community Health Center, along with Aquil Naji, the Chief Operations Officer of Roots Community Health Center, and Kai Safford, caregiver, a patient service specialist for Roots Community Health Center.

[01:10:40] George Koster: You could become a volunteer, mentor or employer by emailing admin@rootsclinic.org and to find out more about Roots Community Health Center Services, along with the impact of their work in our community, and to make a donation, please go to Roots clinic.org. We hope that you enjoyed the insights, points of view and personal stories from the Voices of Change makers and their nonprofits and small businesses featured in this series.

[01:11:09] George Koster: To find out more and get engaged with the nonprofits, small businesses, and staff members featured in the series, please go to my website, george koster.com and click on Voices of the Community to find links to the extended versions of these interviews and to listen to the entire series. After listening to these stories, we hope that you will consider making a donation and volunteering to provide a hand up to your fellow community members.

[01:11:34] George Koster: Today's episode was made possible by the Audio Wizard and our associate producer, Eric Estrada, and the graphics Magic of Casey Nance from Citron Studios, along with the wonderful crew at the San Francisco Public Press and KSFP. Voices of the Community is supported by a grant from the James Irvine Foundation dedicated to a California where all low income workers have the power to advance economically more@irvine.org, voices of the Community is a member of Intersection for the Arts, which allows us to offer you a tax deduction.

[01:12:07] George Koster: For your contributions, please go to george koster.com and click on the donate link to make a donation to help us provide future shows. Just like this one. While you're on our website, you can enjoy our archive to pass shows which feature community voices working on solutions to critical issues facing Northern California communities.

[01:12:26] George Koster: And you can sign up for our newsletter to find out more about future shows as well as shows and events from the organizations that are included in our episodes. Take us along on your next COVID walk by subscribing to voices of the community. On Apple Podcast, Spotify, and Google Podcast or wherever you get your podcast.

[01:12:46] George Koster: You can follow us on Twitter at George Koster and we'd love to hear from you with feedback and show ideas. So send us an email toGeorge@georgekoster.com. I'm George Koster in San Francisco, and thank you for listening.

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