Welcome to Conversations With the Winners.
Today, our conversation is with Linda Coleman.
Linda is Vice President of Resident Services at HumanGood.
And she's a 2020 winner of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
Award for Health Equity.
Welcome, Linda.
Thank you so much for the opportunity Jacinta,
wonderful to be with you.
Linda, tell us about HumanGood.
I'd be happy to Jacinta. Well, let me just tell you,
I've now been with the organization for 13 years and
very fortunate to be with this organization because it's
really about people, purpose, service, culture,
serving our older adults, serving people with disabilities.
Our values are around innovation and passion and impact and courage.
And when I first joined, I felt all of that,
really resonated with me.
Let's talk a little bit about health equity.
What are some of the health equity challenges and issues
residents face?
Well, Jacinta I've been working now in
this industry for over a couple decades,
and I'm sure as you can imagine,
there's those with means and those without means.
And working with the entire spectrum of older adults
and people with disabilities,
there's those with good health insurance and good health.
However, there's those with
increased chronic conditions,
higher health costs, increased poverty levels.
And so, of course, we're working directly
with those very low to low income individuals.
And, as you know, many of our older adults have worked
in lower paying jobs with limited health insurance,
and if you think about it,
I like to describe it to people,
consider the grocery clerks, right?
That you visit on a regular basis.
Your librarians, our teachers,
and you can go on and on, our nurses,
and some of them have,
have had those lower paying wage jobs and they come and,
and enroll in our affordable housing communities.
And I think it's really a blessing that there is this
opportunity where they can,
it's affordable with their limited financial means and they
can live in our communities for as long as they choose.
Let's talk a little bit about systems change.
Sure. Happy to.
So we really, within the organization,
we're able to expand the concept that housing is health care.
So, many years ago, we collaborated with two health plans.
And if it's okay, I will name them.
Health Plan of San Mateo and Inland Empire Health Plan.
And one is in Northern California,
one is in Southern California.
So they are now our partners.
And our real focus was
to build a sustainable model,
informing these purposeful partnerships.
And so for them to be able to have long-term supportive services,
for them to be able to have medication management,
and all these different needs that,
that they need in order to continue to thrive and have,
have their best life.
So this new model for long-term residential care evolved in 2016,
where we started having
these initial conversations with the health plan,
and they were just as enthusiastic as we were.
And what we did in essence is we set aside a certain
amount of apartments in an affordable housing community for
their members.
So setting aside those apartments for the health plan
members were folks that had been in skilled nursing, had
been in assisted living, were formerly homeless,
and now have the ability to live in our affordable housing community.
I mean, when you think about it,
it was like, wow, why haven't we been doing this, right?
Linda, you said something very important.
Housing is health care.
You made independent living available to individuals who
might otherwise require institutional care.
Explain that for us.
Yeah. Well, Jacinta I think for many of us,
we really had to change our perspectives, right?
I mean, we have, this traditional model of,
we just provide housing and within the organization
of HumanGood, but that's not enough.
We know that health care is just as critical and it's just,
it's easy to say, we just need to partner,
but you also need to partner with different, either health
plans or service providers that are in alignment with
mission and values of our organization.
And because we have formed so many great partnerships and
partnerships with purpose, they are truly,
everybody's in alignment of what we're doing.
And I think also we just have to make sure that we continue
to stay innovative.
You speak to innovation,
being a change agent,
being someone who's ushering in systems change,
it takes a particular mindset.
What do you think that mindset is?
Oh, that's a great question, Jacinta.
I think the mindset is
you have to be open,
you have to be creative,
you have to be flexible, and you have to, most importantly, listen.
You have to listen to all of the stakeholders.
And as I mentioned earlier was about the,
changing our perspective, right?
To be able to embrace housing and health care.
What it also means is
requires getting the buy-in from
different levels and different groups, groups of people.
It was also important for me to pull in the operations team,
the project managers, our general counsel,
you just really got to get the buy-in from everyone.
And so in order to be a change agent, you have to
do all the things I mentioned,
be nimble, be a good listener,
but you also have to, requires you to get the buy-in
from so many of your colleagues to be able
to make this a successful venture.
Linda, you mentioned that you are an advocate.
talk to us about what that advocacy looks like.
Sure. Well,
I'd love to give you an example around our advocacy efforts
within the organization.
So, for the last several years,
we've paired up with LeadingAge California,
and we take our residents to the Capitol.
And we take, at least, I would say 30 to 50 residents.
We rent a bus and we gather our residents from typically
the Bay Area.
We drive a few hours out to Sacramento and we go and speak
to the different legislatures.
And it has been one of the most humbling experiences to hear
our residents speak from heart and from passion and from
gratitude that they have this ability to have a home
and to love their home and embrace the staff.
And I think it's, I would say probably one of
my most favorite trips that I get to do annually
is to spend that quality time with the residents
and hear their heartfelt stories to the legislatures,
telling them that we need to build more affordable housing.
Linda, thank you for this conversation and thank you for your
leadership and your advocacy and the work you're doing to
redefine the affordable housing experience for older adults.
On behalf of LeadingAge and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation,
congratulations on your award.
Thank you so much Jacinta, it has been an honor
and a pleasure.
Thank you for joining us for this conversation.
And you are invited to more conversations with the
2020 winners of the RWJF Award for Health Equity.
And you can learn more about all of the winners at RWJF.org.
I'm Jacinta Gauda and thank you for watching.