Denver hospital celebrates 150 years 2 Community benefit briefing 3 Executive changes 6 PERIODICAL RATE PUBLICATION
OCTOBER 2023 VOLUME 39, NUMBER 16
Leaving no one behind: DePaul clinics widen reach in New Orleans
PROVIDING SPACE TO SERVE THE COMMUNITY Cedar Rapids nonprofits pay nearly nothing as tenants of Mercy center
By LISA EISENHAUER
Josh Booth /Diamond Label Films
NEW ORLEANS — The groundbreaking in August on an expanded replacement clinic in the Algiers neighborhood of New Orleans is just the latest example of the growth of DePaul Community Health Centers. The new clinic is being built at an estimated cost of $14.4 million and is planned to open in September 2024. It will have 20,000 square feet of space, five times as much as the current site. The new facility will offer more on-site services, including optometry and urgent care. The groundbreaking came four months after the opening of a DePaul clinic in Harvey, another economically challenged Continued on 8
Trinity Health grant fuels mentoring program at Student Advocacy Center
The Kids First Law Center and YPN (formerly, Young Parents Network) are among the nonprofits that get nearly free office space from Mercy Cedar Rapids. Above, Kids First Executive Director Jenny Schulz is at the office of that organization for kids navigating their parents’ conflicted relationships. Below, YPN volunteer Rebecca Hein provides child care. It is common for the nonprofit’s volunteers to tend to children while parents and guardians attend prenatal and parenting education activities. By JULIE MINDA
W Anell Eccleston talks with a student he was mentoring as part of the Check & Connect program run by the Student Advocacy Center of Michigan. The program recently got a grant from Trinity Health Ann Arbor Hospital. By KARI WILLIAMS
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa hen a disastrous flood in 2008 displaced numerous nonprofits and simultaneously hyperinflated the cost of office space here, Mercy Cedar Rapids came up with a creative idea that has since benefited multiple nonprofits, their clients, the community and the health system. The health system transformed a somewhat dilapidated 100-year-old building it owned near its campus from an underutilized storage site into a vital hub for nonprofits. The building houses five mission-based organizations, at negligible cost to those tenants. The arrangement has allowed Mercy Cedar Rapids to serve the community in a distinct way and the center’s tenants Continued on 4
Avera mobile lab brings researchers to rural communities By VALERIE SCHREMP HAHN
Anell Eccleston remembers a conversation early in his relationship with a boy he was mentoring in which the boy mentioned that he expected to end up in jail. “He didn’t know how he was going to end up there, he just knew he would,” recalls Eccleston, director of care and sustainability for the Student Advocacy Center of Michigan. The boy was one of nine siblings in a family that had been touched by incarceration and poverty. The boy’s mother was unemployed most of the roughly three years Eccleston worked with the boy through the center, a nonprofit focused on keeping Continued on 7
The Avera Research Institute is using its new mobile unit to reach people in remote parts of Avera Health’s service area, allowing them to participate in the institute’s studies.
The Avera Research Institute is on the move — literally. The institute, part of Avera Health, recently acquired a 25-foot mobile research unit, a 2023 Turtle Top Terra Transit vehicle, that travels around the state. It is mostly based in Pierre, South Dakota, which is centrally located and gives easier access to partnering with tribal nations and rural communities. At its “bricks and mortar” site in Sioux Falls, the Avera Research Institute also is involved in studies on cancer among American Indians, substance use and Continued on 6