Healthcare is Resilience | Acceso al cuidado de la salud fortalece la resiliencia

Dear Friends,

We’re thrilled to share our 2025 Impact Report with you!

This report is more than a summary of dollars granted or programs funded — it’s a celebration of what’s possible when our community comes together with purpose. It tells the story of collaboration, creativity, and compassion making a lasting difference across northern Sonoma County.

At the Foundation, we see our role as both incubator and convener — bringing people and ideas together to create the conditions where everyone can thrive. As you’ll read below, this year has seen the instigation or advancement of vital initiatives to strengthen our region’s system of care and serve and empower its most vulnerable residents. Throughout, our work has centered on listening deeply, responding thoughtfully, and planning boldly so that every person in our region has the opportunity to live their healthiest life.

Because healthcare isn’t just a clinic visit or a prescription — it’s mental health, connection, belonging, transportation, nutritious food, and economic opportunity. Research shows that 80% of our health outcomes are shaped by the conditions in which we live, work, and play — and those conditions are where our focus remains.

With our newly completed strategic plan, we’re redoubling our commitment to strengthen these conditions for all. Naturally, we couldn’t do it without the incredible nonprofit and healthcare leaders who make this work real every day. With their insights, expertise, and collaboration our community continues advancing toward a healthier, more equitable future.

In short, healthcare is community — when we trust and invest in each other, everyone benefits. To our donors, partners, and collaborators — thank you. Your generosity, trust, and shared belief in the power of community make this work possible. Every dollar, every partnership, and every act of collaboration fuels progress and deepens our collective impact. Together, we are reimagining what healthcare means — and proving that when we invest in people, we invest in healthful and lasting change.

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Mental Health Talent Pipeline Spotlight: Meet Karina Esquer

When Karina Esquer reflects on the path that led her to USF Santa Rosa and graduate studies in counseling psychology—with support from the Healthcare Foundation’s Mental Health Talent Pipeline scholarship program—she describes a journey marked first by loss, then by unexpected possibility. 

A few years ago, Karina learned she was slowly losing her vision. Eventually, she was declared legally blind. “At that time I didn’t have a job,” she recalls. “I felt really hopeless. I was very depressed. I thought, because I am legally blind I don’t have a future.”

Therapy, she says, changed that.

Karina began attending both individual and group therapy, where she found something stirring in herself even amid depression. “In group sessions, I noticed I was always very positive,” she says. Around the same time, her counselor at the Urban Center—a man who was himself blind—asked her what she wanted to do next. Did she want to work or to study? “I asked, ‘Can I study being legally blind?’ He said, ‘Yes, of course!’”

Read the Full Article (3 min read)

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Bridging the Gap: Expanding Senior Mental-Health Access and Civic Participation in Cloverdale

In the rural heart of northern Sonoma County, many older—particularly Latine—adults in Cloverdale face a paradox of proximity and isolation. Just 20 minutes north of more affluent Healdsburg, seniors here contend with limited healthcare access, transportation hurdles, and linguistic and cultural barriers to mental-health care, along with other challenges to aging in place.

Recognizing this landscape, the Healthcare Foundation has advanced initiatives to expand mental-health access for older adults while strengthening the resilience and community engagement needed to combat social isolation and its impact on health and wellbeing.

These initiatives include the Cloverdale ECO Group, now in its second year. Launched in early 2024 by the Healthcare Foundation and community partners, and supported by The SCAN Foundation in partnership with the California Health Care Foundation, the ECO Group centers older adults in a collaborative exploration of health inequities and community-driven solutions.

Complementing this work is the Healthcare Foundation’s newly secured Kaiser Permanente grant, which underwrites an expansion of bilingual/bicultural mental-health services for seniors delivered through a partnership between On the Margins (OTM) and La Familia Sana (LFS)—two organizations also central to the ECO Group’s success.

“At the heart of both initiatives are three shared goals,” says La Familia Sana Executive Director Jade Weymouth. “Reducing isolation and strengthening social connection; expanding access to mental-health and support resources that feel safe and culturally grounded; and raising the voices of older adults so programs actually fit the reality of Cloverdale’s seniors.”

Read the Full Article (4 min read)