December 2019 community newsletter

As Jackson County’s healthcare needs evolve, La Clinica is evolving, too. CEO Brenda Johnson will discuss key next steps La Clinica is taking to continue providing exceptional care that meets our community’s most pressing needs.

Her presentation from noon to 1 p.m., Thursday, Jan. 23, at the Inn at the Commons, 200 N. Riverside Ave., Medford, is part of our Lunch & Learn with La Clinica series. The quarterly community education series debuted in February 2019. Over the year, around 300 attendees got a look at La Clinica programs and services.

Please join us for lunch and this talk about La Clinica’s plans. Register in advance at laclinicahealth.org/learn to help us plan.

La Clinica will bring education about equity and cultural awareness to the community in 2020 in its new Equity and Agility seminar.

Offered through Wings Seminars, a personal and professional development program of La Clinica, the offering will explore bias, resilience, organizational rank awareness, and communication, among other topics. Participants will explore their own beliefs, thoughts, and feelings as they learn to navigate these topics with others in their communities and the larger world. The seminar runs 2.5 days and will be offered at La Clinica’s Center for Learning and Innovation in Medford.

“With Wings Seminars, we’re bringing personal and professional development opportunities to our staff, patients and the larger community,” said La Clinica CEO Brenda Johnson. “We believe our
love-based approach to equity, diversity and inclusion makes us uniquely positioned to invite learning in a trauma-informed, heart-centered, and personally impactful way.”

Bryon Lambert, director of Equity and Inclusion at the Cross Cultural Health Care Program in Seattle, will lead the session along with Meg Mitchell, a Wing Seminars facilitator.

To learn more, visit www.wings-seminars.com/equity.

La Clinica has emerged as the community’s largest primary care provider of medication-assisted treatment for people dependent on opioids.

The organization now employs 14 healthcare providers who hold the federal waiver that allows them to prescribe the drug buprenorphine, a medication that can treat addiction by curbing withdrawal symptoms. La Clinica providers worked to help 180 patients using the drug in 2018, up from a couple dozen five years earlier, and have already served 191 this year.

The change comes as the nation struggles with an opioid crisis that claimed an estimated 47,000 lives in 2017, according to the US Centers for Disease Control. More than 350 people
died of opioid overdoses in Oregon that year, and many more struggle with addiction.

“We are addressing a need we saw for patients in our community,” said Chief Medical Officer Justin Adams. “This is one more way that we can provide the care that our patients’ need to live their healthiest lives.”

How it works

La Clinica pairs medication-assisted treatment in a primary care setting with group visits focused on recovery and resiliency.
Patients have access to wellness coaches, behavioral health clinicians, and psychiatric mental health nurse practitioners. Community partners provide additional support.