Healthcare is Progress | La Salud es Progreso

Dear Friends,

After the 2017 Tubbs fire devastated our region, a number of needs assessments and community listening sessions were conducted. Among the findings: It was clear that the collective trauma impacting our community’s youngest residents, compounded with the loss of childcare slots due to the fire, was catastrophic.

As time went on, the pandemic only made things worse: dozens of daycares and preschools closed, leaving many working parents without childcare options. School closures, meanwhile, left many at-risk children without traditional safe spaces or the free meals that so many economically disadvantaged families rely on. Not least, the typical social-emotional development that takes place at school was stalled for a generation of kids, which has fueled a large demand for behavioral health services.

First 5 Sonoma County had been studying ways to address the rising demand for expanding our childcare workforce as well as behavioral health services for youth and their families. Yet First 5 had a dwindling pool of resources to work with. Historically funded by the state tobacco tax, the continuing, and otherwise salutary, decline in cigarette smoking meant a concomitant decline in available funding to meet these growing needs.

Enter a group of active and engaged residents—including Healdsburg’s Tony Crabb and Santa Rosa Metro Chamber of Commerce CEO Ananda Sweet—who started to discuss options for raising revenue to help meet this critical need for services supporting Sonoma County families. At the same time, we started to learn what other counties and cities were doing to raise funds. The idea for a citizen’s initiative to create a sales tax measure took shape and Measure I (the “Sonoma County Child Care and Children’s Health Initiative”) was born.

The measure—which imposes a one-quarter of 1% sales tax to help fund child care, early childhood education, and healthcare services for children from low- to middle-income families—ultimately qualified for the ballot, and Sonoma County voters approved it in November 2024.

A year later, it is a deeply satisfying, full-circle moment for all of us who were part of that grassroots effort to see some of the funds generated by Measure I (over $30M annually) now being mobilized through the Healthcare Foundation in support of its important work. I invite you to read further in this month’s newsletter to discover more about what Measure I will do to help our families and future generations thrive in the place we all call home.

Ariel Kelley
Healdsburg City Council Member
Former Mayor of Healdsburg

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Expanding Perinatal and Early Childhood Mental Health Services

A Conversation About New Measure I Funding With First 5’s Angie Dillon-Shore

The Healthcare Foundation is honored to be among the first recipients of Measure I funding, awarded through First 5 Sonoma County to expand access to perinatal and early childhood mental health services across northern Sonoma County. This new support will enable the Foundation to invest $500,000 in local initiatives that advance the health and wellbeing of new parents, infants, and young children—particularly within underserved and Spanish-speaking communities. 

Among the funded partners are Alliance Medical Center, which will relaunch its Madres y Comadres perinatal program and host trainees and associates to provide mental health services for perinatal clients. Funding will also go to the Mental Health Talent Pipeline (MHTP), specifically in its capacity to support new bilingual and bicultural mental health professionals in serving children and families in our region.

Measure I, a ¼-cent sales tax approved by Sonoma County voters in November 2024, established the Sonoma County Child Care and Children’s Health Initiative to generate approximately $150 million over five years to strengthen early care and education (ECE), children’s health services and access to perinatal mental health screening and treatment across Sonoma County. 

Under the initiative’s early investment plan, $11.4 million is being deployed countywide between September 2025 and June 2026 to address urgent needs while a long-term strategy is finalized. Forty percent of Measure I funds are dedicated to children’s health and behavioral health supports—investments that are arriving at a critical moment as other government resources shrink and as families continue to face systemic barriers to affordable, culturally responsive care.

With this Measure I support, the Healthcare Foundation and its partners will be able to strengthen the local perinatal care network, expand mental health access for new parents, and build a diverse, sustainable healthcare workforce that reflects the communities it serves. Together, these efforts represent a vital step toward closing long-standing gaps in maternal and early childhood health services—ensuring that every family in northern Sonoma County has the opportunity to begin life on a foundation of wellness and support.

To learn more about Measure I’s structure and importance, we spoke recently with Angie Dillon-Shore, executive director of First 5 Sonoma County.

Read the Full Interview (4 min read)

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Join Our Team!

We are looking for a new Community and Donor Engagement Specialist.

As a Community and Donor Engagement Specialist you will be the heart and soul of our foundation’s outreach and fundraising efforts. You will work closely with our small team, our board and our network of community partners to create a positive social impact in northern Sonoma County. You will be critical to ensuring that our mission resonates with the community we serve and dedicated to sharing our mission with donors. This is a fantastic opportunity for a creative, organized and motivated individual who wants to make a difference in their community while building their own development and program management skillset.

Click Here for more details or to apply.