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FACES for the Future
Vesper Society is committed to improving the well-being of youth. So, we link arms with leaders and organizations creating long-term solutions in their communities. FACES for the Future at St. Rose Hospital in Hayward, CA, was founded in 2007 as a two-year program to motivate and prepare underrepresented youth for careers in the health industry. Partnering with the Eden Area Regional Occupations Program in Hayward, FACES provides high school students with unique opportunities to learn from healthcare professionals in various hospital settings and explore career options in the health professions. Students benefit from academic enrichment opportunities, including individualized tutoring and college preparation activities, leadership training, and multi-faceted psychosocial support services, including one-on-one case management. The program also assists FACES alumni with job and internship placements, academic and career guidance, and ongoing life coaching. One of the program activities supported by Vesper Society was a retreat in December 2017. Students of the FACES for the Future-Hayward program had the opportunity to attend an overnight retreat in San Francisco. The retreat, offered in partnership with St. Rose Hospital Foundation, Vesper Society, San Francisco State University, and Vision Quilt, taught the students about public health issues and to develop their skills as advocates for their own communities. Activities included a visit by students to San Francisco State University (SFSU) where they were welcomed by Dr. Leticia Marquez-Magana, Professor of Cell and Molecular Biology, and Director of the Health Equity Research Laboratory. Dr. Marquez-Magana taught them about the field of Public Health and got them thinking about the reality of health disparities and social determinants of health. The students completed exercises to understand how they can influence the decisions made at their own schools. They gained familiarity with the college campus and had an opportunity to participate in a mentoring session with SFSU... Read More
FACES for the Future – Hayward Students Attend Retreat
Vesper Society is committed to improving the well-being of youth. So, we link arms with leaders and organizations creating long-term solutions in their communities. FACES for the Future at St. Rose Hospital in Hayward, CA, was founded in 2007 as a two-year program to motivate and prepare underrepresented youth for careers in the health industry. Partnering with the Eden Area Regional Occupations Program in Hayward, FACES provides high school students with unique opportunities to learn from healthcare professionals in various hospital settings and explore career options in the health professions. Students benefit from academic enrichment opportunities, including individualized tutoring and college preparation activities, leadership training, and multi-faceted psychosocial support services, including one-on-one case management. The program also assists FACES alumni with job and internship placements, academic and career guidance, and ongoing life coaching. In December 2017, the students of the FACES for the Future-Hayward program had the opportunity to attend an overnight retreat in San Francisco. The retreat, offered in partnership with St. Rose Hospital Foundation, Vesper Society, San Francisco State University, and Vision Quilt, taught the students about public health issues and to develop their skills as advocates for their own communities. And of course, they had a lot of fun, too! Students began their retreat by participating in a Ropes Course at Fort Miley where they cheered each other on, spot-checked their peers, and faced their fears of heights. Later that day, students visited at San Francisco State University (SFSU) and were welcomed by Dr. Leticia Marquez-Magana, Professor of Cell and Molecular Biology, and Director of the Health Equity Research Laboratory. Dr. Marquez-Magana taught them about the field of Public Health, and got them thinking about the reality of health disparities and social determinants of health. The students completed exercises to understand how they can influence the... Read More
Strengthening Youth Voices in the Imperial Valley
Vesper Society is dedicated to long-term solutions that help communities help themselves. In the Imperial Valley, Vesper Society partners with Renaissance Journalism to empower youth to tell their own stories, in their own voices, as a way to visualize a better future and promote positive social change. (At Left: Adalberto Lopez, Brawley Union High School, sets up video camera.) At its first Youth Voices Digital Institute this June, 10 high school students traveled 600 miles north to take part in a week-long crash course in multi-media journalism at San Francisco State University. Most of the students are of Latino heritage, so the program is designed to help them recognize the value of their cultural backgrounds and to utilize the bilingual reality that exists in the Imperial Valley. The students were sent out on assignments, such as interviewing San Francisco Supervisor David Campos, covering an Oakland A’s baseball game and meeting with the staff of El Tecolote, a bilingual newspaper serving the Mission District. Their 12-hour days were jam-packed with video lessons, interviews with community leaders, daily deadlines and countless hours of computer work to produce stories about their experiences. By the end of the week, each of the students produced a video story about their experiences. The stories were screened during an emotional graduation ceremony that was broadcast over the Internet so that their families and friends could watch from their homes in Imperial County. With this intensive experience under their belts, the students can return to their respective schools and help teach other students the power of storytelling. Local journalists will continue to work with the students. As the program progresses during the regular school term, you can expect more students to start posting their stories. Young people will actively engage their community with new communications tools that can... Read More
Women’s Community Clinic
At Vesper Society, we seek out overlooked communities and help them devise ways to create a healthy future. One of the ways we do this is by supporting the Women’s Community Clinic (the Clinic) in San Francisco. Though San Francisco is known as a thriving and prosperous city, many of its residents—especially low-income, homeless, and marginalized women—have limited or no access to preventative healthcare. The Women’s Community Clinic, founded in 1999 by a group of volunteer graduates from the UCSF School of Nursing, believes that preventive, educational care is essential to lifelong health and that all women deserve excellent healthcare, regardless of their ability to pay. The Clinic works hard to ensure that each client feels comfortable and safe in a warm and welcoming environment. Their treatments are culturally sensitive, evidence-based, and tailored to each client’s needs and circumstances. The Clinic provides a full range of client-centered clinical services including acute and chronic primary care, reproductive health services, integrated mental health counseling, and referrals to onsite prenatal care. In San Francisco’s Western Addition neighborhood, the Clinic’s work addresses some troubling statistics; 25% of Western Addition residents use the emergency room as their primary source of care and only 6-9% are receiving preventative healthcare. In San Francisco’s Mission District, the Clinic’s Outreach Program provides health education services to homeless and marginalized women. The Mission’s Workforce Development program and the Western Addition’s Health Training Program, which focuses on African American women, provide valuable training to the next generation of healthcare providers, leaders, and advocates, and keeps the offered services affordable for all. Today, the Clinic serves more than 4,000 San Francisco women and girls over the age of 12, of which 91% are uninsured and most are living at or below the Federal Poverty level. Vesper Society’s support allowed for the... Read More
Modoc Medical Center’s Tele-Diabetes Care Program
Located in the rural northeastern portion of California, Modoc Medical Center (MMC) has seen to the healthcare needs of its community since 1951. A 16-bed, critical access hospital providing family practice medicine, emergency services, and physical therapy, MMC serves the residents of Alturas and the surrounding area, covering about 4,500 square miles. MMC also operates a skilled nursing facility and provides other ancillary services. MMC’s mission is to elevate the provision of healthcare by creating a partnership with its patients, employees, businesses, and community. Embedded in this mission statement is the fundamental belief that success depends on the ability to provide quality healthcare services to patients and establish the processes and culture that puts patients at the center of the work. In a community with very limited resources in helping patients manage chronic diseases, MMC developed the Comprehensive Diabetes Care Program. Vesper Society supported MMC’s expansion of this program by providing group telehealth diabetes education classes that include a diabetic educator, a dietician, and a pharmacist. This comprehensive educational approach provides patients with the knowledge they need to manage their diabetes. Through this program, MMC and Vesper sought to improve the health and well-being of Modoc County residents and to give them the tools to continue helping... Read More
Connecting to Care Telehealth Services
In 2011, the Health Resources and Services Administration stated that, compared to urban and suburban Americans, rural Americans with behavioral health disorders are significantly less likely to receive any type of treatment for their behavioral health due to lack of resources. And, in an era of increased poverty levels, travel costs are an even greater barrier to rural residents receiving specialty services not locally available. Connecting to Care (CtoC) provides charitable health services using innovative technology to connect underserved populations to care and promotes the health and well-being of individuals regardless of their economic status. Medical providers in a number of rural sites in Northern California reported that telepsychiatry and telebehavioral health programs were unavailable or unaffordable. With support from Vesper Society, these programs are now operational in eleven clinics in Plumas, El Dorado, Modoc, Nevada, and Shasta Counties. CtoC has provided over 1,000 telebehavioral health visits to rural partner sites since the program’s inception. Connecting to Care, located in Grass Valley and Redding, California, also provides remote specialty bi-lingual physician-level adult/child psychiatric care and the services of licensed clinical psychologists, nurse practitioners, and licensed clinical social workers. They conduct programs on-site in their Redding office as well as remotely in rural health clinic sites. Vesper Society knows that rural areas need more attention. Connecting to Care’s Telebehavioral Health Services Program has clearly created long-term solutions that improve the health and well-being of the medically underserved, rural, and frontier Northern California... Read More