Forward Together | Juntos Hacia Adelante

Dear Friends,

As a social worker, I learned early in my career that no matter how dedicated or skilled an individual organization may be, lasting change is never achieved in isolation. Families and individuals don’t experience their challenges in silos, they navigate housing, healthcare, mental health, food access, transportation, and economic hardship all at once. Meaningful, sustainable impact only happens when an entire ecosystem works together.

That philosophy has shaped the Healthcare Foundation’s approach over the past few years. We believe our greatest role is not simply to fund programs, but to bring people together, strengthen partnerships, and build the systems that allow communities to thrive long after individual grants have ended.

That belief led us to convene and invest in the Northern Sonoma County Coalition—a collaborative of local organizations, led by incredibly bright and insightful leaders, working together to strengthen access to healthcare, behavioral health, housing, and social services across our region. As both the Coalition’s convener and primary funder, the Foundation has created the space, infrastructure, and strategic support needed for organizations to move beyond working in parallel and begin building a truly coordinated system of care.

The results have been remarkable. Through technical assistance, shared learning, and collaborative implementation of CalAIM, Coalition partners have secured hundreds of thousands of dollars in new, sustainable annual revenue while expanding their capacity to serve our community’s most vulnerable residents. More importantly, this work is creating a stronger, more resilient network of care, one that is financially sustainable, deeply collaborative, and better equipped to respond to the evolving needs of Northern Sonoma County.

As you read this month’s newsletter, I hope you’ll see that the Northern Sonoma County Coalition is about much more than one initiative. It represents a different way of approaching community health—one that recognizes our greatest impact comes when we invest not only in individual organizations, but in the relationships, trust, and shared infrastructure that connect them.

Amy Ramirez
Executive Director

---

A Year in Collaboration!

Reflecting on the impact of the Northern Sonoma County Coalition as it enters its second year

When the Healthcare Foundation launched the Northern Sonoma County Coalition in early 2025, the vision was both ambitious and wholly practical: bring together six trusted community organizations providing front-line support to our most vulnerable neighbors to help transform the region’s fragmented safety net into a more coordinated, sustainable system of care.

United by a shared commitment to implementing California’s CalAIM initiative, Alexander Valley Healthcare, Alliance Medical Center, The Botanical Bus, Corazón Healdsburg, La Familia Sana, and Reach for Home began meeting regularly—not as competitors for limited resources, but as partners working toward a common goal: ensuring that northern Sonoma County’s most vulnerable residents can access the right care, at the right time, through a system that is stronger than the sum of its parts.

Now, more than a year later, that vision is taking root. While the work of implementing CalAIM is often technical and behind the scenes, its effects are increasingly visible in stronger organizations, better referral networks, and more coordinated care. Conversations with Reach for Home and Alexander Valley Healthcare reveal that the Coalition’s greatest accomplishment extends beyond new funding or systems: it’s the trust that has developed among organizations that are now building an integrated regional system of care together.

Read the Full Article (3 min read)

Thank You to Our Generous Funders!

---

Welcome John Bursick!

The Healthcare Foundation is pleased to welcome John Bursick to our Board of Directors!

John is a California licensed attorney at Rapport & Marston, an association of sole practitioners, based in Ukiah, CA. His practice focuses on federal Indian law, tribal litigation, and regulatory advocacy. As a former Health Law Fellow at UC Davis Health in Sacramento, CA, he also possesses experience in the technical aspects of healthcare regulatory compliance and policy, and has a strong personal interest in biotechnology and medicine.

We’ll be interviewing John in a future newsletter. Stay tuned!