Executive Director's Welcome
As the new director of ALL IN Alameda County, I am delighted to share our newsletter featuring the recent efforts of ALL IN to address issues of poverty in Alameda County. Our strategies are grounded in innovation and collaboration. From multi-sectoral approaches and place-based strategies, we are successfully establishing initiatives that tackle poverty at multiple levels. ALL IN does this work through a network of thought partners and collaborators.
As I settle into my new role, I have enjoyed meeting with staff from county agencies, community based organizations, and community residents who are committed to eradicating poverty and meeting short, intermediate, and long term needs of members of our community. Our political environment is charged and the economic outlook is uncertain, especially for low-income individuals and families living that “Everyday Struggle” to make ends meet and manage the weight of toxic stress. During times like this locally driven strategies and advocacy are necessary to protect our most vulnerable.
Featured in this issue are highlights of our Food as Medicine expansion and the grand opening of San Antonio Family Resource Center, as well as other exciting endeavors led by ALL IN and its partners. You can find out more about these exciting efforts in the newsletter or by visiting our website. As always, contact us at allincommunity@acgov.org if you have any questions, comments, or would like to engage.
I look forward to working with each of you in this important work.
Be Well!
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Larissa J. Estes, DrPH
Director, ALL IN Alameda County
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Cultivating Food as Medicine Across Alameda County
ALL IN is quickly expanding its Food as Medicine initiative across Alameda County. Using a food farmacy model, clinics are distributing fresh produce, lean proteins, and whole grains to clinic patients and families to help improve food security and access to nutritious foods that promote dietary health and well-being. ALL IN and its partners are currently working with Hayward Wellness, La Clinica de la Raza, Native American Health Center, West Oakland Health Council, and Roots Community Clinics to host regular food farmacies for their patients. Food farmacies are located on-site at each clinic and provide resources and referrals to other community food resources such as CalFRESH, Alameda County Community Food Bank, local growers and farmers’ markets. ALL IN has plans to add two more food farmacies in East County (e.g. Livermore or Pleasanton) and Central County (e.g. Ashland/Cherryland) in early 2020.
In addition to expanding food farmacies, ALL IN is excited to announce its Food as Medicine partnership with Alameda Alliance for Health, a public, not-for-profit managed care health plan committed to making high quality health care services accessible and affordable to lower-income people of Alameda County. ALL IN and Alameda Alliance will be partnering with up to two clinics in Alameda County on an integrated approach to Food as Medicine. This approach builds upon an on-site food farmacy model, provides training to clinical staff on how to use Food as Medicine and Food Prescriptions during clinical encounters, and adds a group medical visit behavioral pharmacy to support behavior change associated with nutrition, physical activity, stress reduction, and social connectivity.
ALL IN is Growing - Welcome Dr. Steven Chen
ALL IN is excited to welcome Dr. Steven Chen to our team as the Chief Medical Officer. He brings an integrative health equity lens to ALL IN’s work on poverty. Dr. Chen will lead ALL IN’s efforts to scale and spread the Food as Medicine model across Alameda County health clinics, health systems, and food systems. His areas of expertise include integrative medicine, health equity, and innovative models of care that address social determinants of health (SDOH) to improve health outcomes. As the former Medical Director at Hayward Wellness, an FQHC clinic in the Alameda Health System, he and his team developed an innovative “Food as Medicine” model that is clinically integrated and bundles together a variety of interventions to improve health: a “food farmacy” and food prescriptions through a partnership with a local farm, a “social needs pharmacy” to connect patients to community resources, and a group medical visit “behavioral pharmacy” that combines movement, nutrition, stress reduction and social support.
A graduate of Stanford University and Stanford School of Medicine, Dr. Chen is a board-certified family medicine physician who completed his residency training at UCSF-San Francisco General Hospital. Dr. Chen received additional fellowship training in Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona, the California HealthCare Foundation’s Leadership Program, and acupuncture training through the UCLA-HMI Physicians’ Medical Acupuncture program.
Dr. Chen’s commitments to a more just and inclusive world is informed by his experiences as a son of immigrants and a 2nd generation Taiwanese American. He is excited to join the team and contribute an integrative health equity lens to ALL IN’s work to address poverty.
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 Introducing ALL IN’s Food as Medicine Toolkit
ALL IN is excited to share its new Food as Medicine Toolkit, titled Rooting Food as Medicine in Healthcare: A Toolkit for Primary Care Clinics and other Healthcare Settings. This comprehensive guide aims to help healthcare providers address the link between food insecurity and patient health outcomes. Food as Medicine helps connect standard healthcare interventions - such as medication and individual patient education - to the local food system through direct community engagement. ALL IN would like to thank its partners, the Alameda County Community Food Bank and UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital – Oakland, for their collaboration in creating the toolkit. With this toolkit, All In hopes to expand Food as Medicine to clinics across the country.
In May, over 50 stakeholders attended our Healthcare Strategies team’s Food as Medicine convening, where the toolkit was launched, to bring their experiences and resources together and develop long-term goals for the Food as Medicine initiative. Thank you to all of our attendees – including primary care providers, community and county agencies, farmers, healthcare leaders, community members, elected officials, and funders – for your participation in this event. Your involvement produced long-term goals and identified resources for ALL IN to incorporate into our future Food as Medicine work.
Fruitvale/San Antonio Community Engagement Hub
Earlier this year, ALL IN launched the Community Engagement Hub (CEH) to empower resident leaders to promote health and well-being in their neighborhoods. Thank you to La Clínica de La Raza Inc. for training ALL IN’s Healthy Food Champions (HFC) – an initial cohort included six community leaders who worked to design programs that promote healthy lifestyles throughout Oakland’s Fruitvale and San Antonio neighborhoods.
The success of the HFC work relies on engaging local residents to ensure programs are reflective of the community’s needs. Our HFCs collectively put in nearly 300 hours and engaged close to 1,800 community members to create the following programs:
- Healthy eating workshops during Food Farmacy distributions at the Native American Health Center and La Clínica
- An urban garden at the Manzanita Recreational Center and trainings for residents to start growing their own food in the San Antonio
- Coordination and preparation of healthy meals to be served to community members during regular Family Friday events at Manzanita Recreational Center.
- Nutritional and cooking workshops to families at Garfield Elementary School
ALL IN would like to thank our HFCs – Angela Huapaya, Silvia Guzman, Joan Jones, Nicole Wright, Maria Uribe, and Jamisha Dews – for their dedication to the CEH. We look forward to working with our HFCs and La Clínica in the coming year to refine the program and grow their leadership roles in the community.
 San Antonio Family Resource Center Ribbon Cutting
Thanks to the support from First 5 Alameda County’s Neighborhoods Ready for School grant initiative, ALL IN was thrilled to join our partners – Lotus Bloom, Trybe, and EBAYC– in celebrating the opening of our newly renovated San Antonio Family Resource Center (SAFRC) at Garfield Elementary School this August. This partnership was the result of early organizing efforts by Alameda County Supervisor Wilma Chan to support neighborhood transformation in the San Antonio neighborhood and ALL IN thanks Supervisor Chan for her early and continued support for ALL IN, the SAFRC, NRFS, and the San Antonio community.
The SAFRC is a community-led, multi-generational approach to increasing school readiness and empowering parents by providing access to a number of wrap-around services, including early childhood programs, parent education, case management, and cooking demonstrations. We are pleased to share that the SAFRC served nearly 90 families with children ages 0-5 and provided case management to over 60 unique families.
As the SAFRC team enters the 2019-2020 school year, our team is excited to continue developing partnerships and enhancing our community connections in the San Antonio neighborhood. Our goal is for families to have a loving, supportive space where they feel empowered, connect with other parents, and obtain resources that ensure their children feel prepared to start preschool and kindergarten. If you are interested in learning more about the project and how you may get involved, please contact Jessica Blakemore.
Healthy Food Healthy Families Policy Lab
The Bay Area has a vibrant food economy. Local networks of food growers, distributors, and consumers can provide a valuable boost to the region’s economic well-being – the Bay Area’s own/local food economy employs close to 500,000 people and is valued at over $100 billion each year. Despite the high employment and earnings, 1 in 5 Bay Area residents are food insecure and unable to access healthy, high quality, and affordable foods. While recent policies designed to support small food business development have helped Alameda County residents enter the food economy, unequal access to these programs, the lack of healthy foods in low-income neighborhoods, and increasing poverty rates continue to harm many of our community members’ quality of life.
ALL IN created the Healthy Food Healthy Families (HFHF) Policy Lab to make effective, lasting change to the health and well-being of food insecure communities. We are excited to partner with In-Advance to carry out the HFHF Policy Lab’s mission to engage hundreds of residents living in East Oakland to establish a policy platform that addresses the inequity in the Bay Area Food Economy and an action plan for ALL IN’s policy work. ALL IN’s goal is to support healthy foods as a platform for generating wealth on a community level, promoting health, and reducing food insecurity for impacted communities living in Alameda County.
Food Recovery Update
ALL IN is proud to partner with the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office (ACSO), Deputy Sheriff’s Activities League (DSAL), and Alameda County Probation Department to launch a Food Recovery pilot program this fall. The pilot will be part of ACSO’s Community Capitals Policing (CCP) model, which invests in a community-centered approach that utilizes interconnected resources in an effort to strengthen neighborhoods in Alameda County.
DSAL and ACSO are in the process of hiring a Food Recovery manager to support logistics and operations. ALL IN is also planning to further expand Food Recovery by convening partners including StopWaste, Satellite Affordable Housing Associates (SAHA), Mercy Housing, Food Shift, Daily Bowl, the City of San Leandro, Oakland & Livermore Unified School Districts, and others.
DSAL and ACSO are also overseeing the construction of a Food Hub in Ashland – an under-resourced unincorporated community in Alameda County. The purpose of the Hub is to build local wealth through local healthy food production and support emerging food businesses and food career training in underserved Alameda County communities. The Food Hub will be a vital piece of Alameda County’s food distribution network by providing much needed services:
- Recovering, cleaning, and distributing recovered edible produce and food items to emergency food centers (e.g. Alameda County Community Food Bank)
- Gathering produce from local growers and distributing to institutions such as hospitals, clinics, and schools
- Serving as a center to provide food from “farm to clinic” to scale ALL IN’s Food as Medicine initiative throughout Alameda County
- Providing support for small business opportunities, career pathway education, and building a pipeline of living-wage food systems jobs
 Alameda County Fathers Corps Awards
ALL IN would like to congratulate Corey Brown, our Administrative Assistant, on receiving the Alameda County Fathers Corps’ (ACFC) Jeff Gillenkirk Award for his exemplary service to ACFC!
ACFC’s mission is to promote meaningful engagement between fathers/father-figures and their children and families, to advocate for family service providers to provide father-friendly services, and to assist fathers in strengthening their parenting skills. The Jeff Gillenkirk award – named for the late ACFC co-founder – is awarded to Father Corps members and allies who embody Jeff’s spirit and passion for advocating and supporting the needs of fathers and father-figures.
Since 2018, Corey has distinguished himself by his flawless support to the Fathers Corps’ Interagency Fatherhood Work Group (IFW). Corey’s unmatched initiative, organization, and attention to detail helped launch the first year of the IFW. Building on his commitment to the ACFC, Corey volunteered at the inaugural Fatherhood Summit in March 2019. Corey’s dedication and organizational skills were on full display at the summit. Corey was one of the volunteer leads and oversaw over 25 workshops with 75-plus presenters, facilitators, and panelists.
Congratulates, Corey, on this outstanding acknowledgement and thank you for your tireless commitment to serving the needs of Alameda County’s children, youth and families.
Philanthropic Ventures Foundation
Bay Area Inspire Awards
Philanthropic Ventures Foundation (PVF) is now accepting applications for their Bay Area Inspire Awards!
The Bay Area Inspire Awards program offers grants up to $5,000 to 6 young people (18-30 years) with an idea to improve their community. Projects might relate to one of the areas below, but all innovative ideas are welcome:
- Youth mentorship
- Underserved population
- Housing displacement
- Environmental sustainability
- Economic development
- Grassroots journalism
- Immigrant rights
- Family services
- Civic engagement
- STEM education
PVF and a team of advisors will provide support to the awardee cohort throughout the year as they complete their project. We are always deeply inspired by the community building these grants support.
Applications are due September 30. For more information or to apply, visit PVF's website.
Upcoming Events
Steering Committee Meetings
ALL IN Steering Committee meetings are held on the third Wednesday of the month from 1:00 PM-2:30 PM at 1221 Oak Street, Room 255, Oakland, CA (unless otherwise stated):
- Wednesday, September 18, 2019
- Wednesday, October 16, 2019
- Wednesday, November 20, 2019
Neighborhood Steering Committee
The Fruitvale/San Antonio Neighborhood Steering committee meetings are held on the fourth Wednesday of the month from 12:30 PM-2:00 PM. For additional information, contact Hannah Moore.
- September 25, 2019
- October 23, 2019
- November 20, 2019
- December 2019 TBD
Tri-Valley Anti-Poverty Collaborative Affordable Housing Convening
The Tri-Valley Anti-Poverty Collaborative will be hosting a breakfast convening on affordable housing on Thursday, October 24th from 7:30 am-9:30 am at HUB 925 located at 5341 Owens Ct, Pleasanton, CA. Speakers will be David Garcia, Policy Director at UC Berkeley's Terner Center and Gloria Bruce, Executive Director of East Bay Housing Organization. To RSVP, contact Kristi Miller at Kmiller@tvapc.org.
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