New health care clinic for African-Americans opens
The ‘ whole person’model goes beyond physical health to provide services formental health, employment and housing at center on The Alameda
SAN JOSE — When it opens its doors on Monday, the Roots Community Health Center on The Alameda will be the first primary care service provider in the South Bay aimed at improving the health and well-being of African-Americans.
Supporters say it couldn’t happen soon enough.
Santa Clara County is home to about 55,000 African-Americans, but the black community here — like African-American communities nationwide — continues to face serious health disparities compared with other racial and ethnic groups.
A 2014 county report revealed that more than any other group African-Americans here have a lower life expectancy; a higher rate of infant mortality in the first year of life; a higher rate of cancer mortality; a higher rate of high blood pressure; a higher rate of new HIV diagnoses; and after Latinos the
highest rate of diabetes.
Studies have also shown that stress from the effects of racism also contribute to poor health outcomes for African-Americans.
“What we do is ‘whole person’ care,” said Walter Wilson, a San Jose-based African-American activist, business owner and Roots board member who has volunteered for years at Roots headquarters in Oakland, where the nonprofit has been operating since 2008.
“We wrap our arms around an individual when they come in,” he said. “We want them to know: This is your doctor and this is your medical team that is going to take care of you.”
The “whole person” health care model that Roots espouses isn’t just about physical health. It also pays attention to a person’s mental health, the importance of being employed and having housing.
In San Jose, the new Roots clinic will be located in the same building as Ujima Adult and Family Services, a county-affiliated mental health care provider for African-Americans founded in 1991.
Roots also tries to match patients — including homeless people and ex-convicts — with jobs. In Oakland, the group’s own soap-making business offers paid work, an operation that Roots officials say they hope to duplicate in San Jose.
“Our charge is to make sure, as best we can, to try to empower them to become financially independent,” said Wilson, a member of the Black Leadership Kitchen Cabinet of Silicon Valley, which helped to spur the health report and the new clinic. Started in 2005, the “cabinet” includes dozens of African-American organizations, churches, community groups and individuals working to enhance their members’ health, education and business opportunities.
Frank Swann, 33, is among those who have benefited from the Roots program in Oakland.
After he was released from prison in 2015 for assault with a deadly weapon, Swann worked at odd jobs to get by because his criminal history made it tough to find employment.
When he got into a car accident in January that left him with a dislocated hip and injury to a disc in his neck, he looked around for medical help and found Roots, where he checks in regularly with his doctor and is given ibuprofen for his pain. He also has a full-time job making and selling soap in Clean360, the Roots-created business.
“Everyone likes it because it’s part of the community where anyone can come in there and get access to medical care,” Swann said of the clinic. “Overall, I believe it’s a 100 percent program that works.”
In San Jose, the ability to operate in one facility that can coordinate physical and mental health care services will help the Roots staff target those patients seeking both kinds of care.
According to the county, about 1,300 African-Americans each year frequently use hospital emergency rooms and emergency psychiatric services, as well as other acute care settings, when a less expensive clinic visit would suffice.
“You really do have to take a holistic approach — all kinds of factors that are ancillary but important to what we normally think of as health. It’s not just medicine,’’ said David Cortese, president of the county board of supervisors, which last year agreed to fund Roots’ $3.2 million startup and capital costs.
Another $1 million subsidy from county is expected to help fund the clinic’s upcoming budget year, he said, with lesser amounts over the next several years until Roots becomes self-sufficient — like the Oakland operation.
That is the goal of Dr. Noha Aboelata, a 45-year-old Oakland native and primary care physician who in 2008 cofounded Roots Community Health Care in Oakland. Since then, she said, the number of patients at both its adult and pediatric clinics there has grown to 9,748.
In 2016, Aboelata said, Roots logged 14,969 clinician visits, and about 87 percent of patients were enrolled in Medi-Cal. A team of health care workers in the Oakland location regularly visits homeless encampments, a team that the San Jose Roots clinic expects to form.
Now chief executive of the nonprofit, Aboelata said the new clinic will benefit from lessons learned in Oakland, where 28 percent — or 118,000 people — are African-American.
For example, she said, after aggressive outreach, the patient population at the Roots clinic in Oakland now includes an equal number of men and women — which is unusual. Normally, she said, women tend to be a large majority of clinic patients because they often seek out health care related to birth control or pregnancy.
The black population is much smaller in the South Bay, and African-Americans here have a higher socio-economic status. In addition, the population is not as concentrated in one area like in Oakland, where the Roots clinics are located in the heart of East Oakland, allowing many residents to walk to see their doctors.
But, Aboelata said, Santa Clara County’s clinic — open to all South Bay residents — will be centrally located at the intersection of Hedding Street and The Alameda, near Interstate 880. It’s also served by two main bus lines, she noted.
The county’s scattered African-American population also makes it more challenging for the nonprofit to publicize the new clinic. But Roots has paid for ads on billboards, buses, bus shelters, hospital emergency rooms and has targeted AfricanAmerican churches and affiliated organizations.
Outreach during next month’s Juneteenth celebrations, which commemorate the end of slavery in the United States on June 19, 1865, also is expected to help.
Improving health care outcomes, for now, remains Roots’ first goal, Aboelata said.
“All people deserve a nice, clean and high-quality environment to receive their health care,” she said. “And we are proud to be able to provide that.”