The Power of Possible

Welcome to Legacy Health Endowment! We look forward to getting to know more about you as well as providing information about LHE and what we hope to accomplish for the greater LHE community.

I am proud to be the first President and CEO of LHE. I joined this new organization because of the enormous healthcare challenges facing all of us and the opportunity to address these issues in the Greater LHE Community. Since joining LHE in June 2016, it has been amazing listening, learning and talking with citizens of all ages and backgrounds within the Greater LHE Community, which includes both rural and semi-rural cities and towns.

The challenges our communities face are significant and not uncommon. Many other communities experience difficulty in maintaining and attracting medical care personnel and because our resources are limited, creating sustainable healthcare solutions can be challenging.

While many view these as significant challenges, I view them as an opportunity to change the status quo and demonstrate how healthcare can drive change, innovation and economic development.

Our Greater LHE Community is comprised of individuals, many of whom grew up here; who lived through economic recessions and water shortages, yet still open their arms to citizens from across the globe. The people I have met in this community possess a vibrancy that is infectious and an unwavering faith. Though these qualities are hard to find in urban America, they are emblematic of the community my wife and I now call home.

Our Challenge

Unfortunately, as the Community has grown and aged, the availability of medical care has not kept pace; and in many cases, it has been greatly reduced. However, those doctors and other medical care providers who are part of the core of the LHE Community are what makes this such an incredible place to live and work.

At LHE we believe in using philanthropy as venture capital to invest in people, strategies and ideas to test short-term strategies that could ultimately lead to long term, sustainable healthcare change. We design programs and initiatives that underscore the fabric of the community. We try to determine the best solutions by talking with experts in and outside of California to make sure what we invest in will benefit from lessons that were learned in the past.

Our grantmaking will focus on a wide range of people in our Community, including those who are Medi-Cal eligible as well as the middle class and working families. We’re exploring options for prenatal care and solutions for families with someone suffering from a severe disability or Alzheimer’s.

The LHE grantmaking process is focusing on:

• The health and wellness of healthcare workers;

• Building creative solutions to help families deal with the challenges of supporting family members with Alzheimer’s by focusing on ways to support the healthy spouse, partner or child of an aging parent; and

• Using home care services to help vulnerable elderly age in place.

While we are doing this, we are also running a parallel program to better understand how to begin to tackle four important issues:

• How can we begin to educate and build a core group of healthcare professionals within the Greater LHE Community?

• How can we tackle the two-fold question of how to begin to rebuild a new primary care and specialty medical care infrastructure?

• How can we help Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) operating within the Greater LHE Community face their most pressing challenges as partners?

• How can a philanthropy build partnerships with public and private business to create solutions to the crisis in mental health?

We face tough choices every day. And while these challenges are large and complicated, the opportunities we have before us to change the status quo is real and even larger.

With warm regards,

Jeffrey Lewis, President & CEO
jeffrey@legacyhealthendowment.org