Connect Live @ Adventist Health | October 21, 2021
Story 53

Joyce Newmyer:          

Welcome to Connect Live at Adventist Health. I'm Joyce Newmyer, Chief Culture Officer at Adventist Health and your host for Connect Live. Live this week, we'll be talking about mayors supporting Blue Zones; Diversity, Equity & Inclusion; and the whole picture. Mayors support Blue Zones: 1,400 mayors from America's largest cities met in Austin, Texas, this year for their annual meeting. Thinking of their own cities, they passed a resolution to support Blue Zones community well-being initiatives across the entire United States.

This is because in five years cities that have already launched the Blue Zones projects have leaped forward in their health percentiles. You can visit bluezones.com for more information today and start your city on the journey to live longer, better lives. Today, I am delighted to welcome our guests, John Raffoul and Taylor Laurie. Thank you to both of you for joining me here today. John, you're the president of Adventist Health White Memorial, and Taylor, you're the Mission and Spiritual Care Director at Adventist Health Simi Valley.

And Taylor, let's start with you. I know you're passionate about Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. You serve on the Adventist Health DEI Council. And would you share with our viewers why this subject and space is so important to you?

Taylor Laurie:               

Well, yes. And thank you, Joyce, so much for having me today. I'm excited to talk about this because yes, DE&I issues are very passionate and close to my heart. First, it really does come from out of a place of my personal, genuine experience being a woman of color and moving into a space within serving our church, within the Seventh-day Adventist Church as a pastor. I was met with much controversy early on, and I really had to develop a spirit of resilience and understanding who I was as a person and being comfortable with that identity, knowing my own personal value and worth.

And then as I interact with others, seeing them through that same lens of who you are as a person, and it personally directly connects to my faith in Jesus. Jesus sees us as a person, each individual that he loves, that he cares for. And so for me, that translates over into how I interact, how I care for, how I love other people. And I feel that DE&I issues are really just a natural expression of that.

Joyce Newmyer:          

That's beautiful. Thank you for sharing that with us. John, you lead Adventist Health White Memorial in downtown Los Angeles, where you and your team serve a very diverse population. So tell us about how you and your team address the unique needs of your community.

John Raffoul:                

Happy to do that. And thank you, Joyce, for inviting me to be part of this discussion. Our community here in East Los Angeles is indeed unique. It's largely Hispanic, poor, economically challenged, and we have over 35 gangs that operate in the surrounding areas of the hospital. We also have a food desert. We don't have that many places that sell vegetables and fruits around us, and that affects the well-being of the kids and adults that live in our community. So here at White Memorial, what we have done to address the fact that most of our clients, most of our patients are Hispanic – I’ll give you an example of a program that we started called TELACU program. Now, through the TELACU program, we actually give scholarships to Hispanic nurses that speak bilingually, Spanish and English. And we actually recruit about 10 of them a year and sometimes more. We recruit as many as 15 and 20 a year of the TELACU nurses, so we can deliver culturally sensitive care directly to our patients. And delivering culturally sensitive care makes a lot of difference in the outcomes and well-being of our patients.

John Raffoul:                

It's a poor population. To give you an example, last year we distributed over 150,000 meals during the pandemic to our neighbors. We partnered with a YMCA and several other churches, the White Memorial Church, and together we did a campaign to deliver 150,000 meals to our poor community. We also feed the homeless at our Dolores Mission. We feed roughly about 60 homeless people on a regular basis. We actually go to the community and we cook for them. And sometimes we have music for them.

We set up a really nice environment for them, and we have a meal with them. We sit down and eat with them, as well. I mentioned the gangs earlier. Well, we have something very innovative here at White Memorial. We actually have hired a full time gang liaison in our ED. So when we have a gang member that comes to the ED with a medical issue, we have a gang liaison that works directly with that gang member and take takes care of him or her and the families that are with them. And that helped us really show the community that we care about them.

We care about the gangs, as well. And honestly, because of that, we have not had any issues as far as the graffiti or as far as violence or any gang activity on our campus. They consider us a neutral zone, if you will. We also started a community garden to address the food desert issue that we have. And that's where we actually invite the kids from the community, from the schools, elementary schools and the neighbors and the neighborhood to come and actually plant something and learn how to eat fruits and vegetables and cultivate their own crop, if you will.

And I can go on and on, from the limb salvage program, the cleft palate program and other things. We do all of these really to be a good partner in our community. We also have a DE&I task force to celebrate the diversity and raise awareness of the different associates that we have here on our campus and how to get them included in everything we do. We have kicked off a Culture Humility Initiative also to teach our associates and leaders how to be culturally sensitive and practice the humility when dealing with other cultures, as well.

So we're very proud of the work that we are doing here, and we still have a long way to go, as well.

Joyce Newmyer:          

Wow. That sounds like you are very intentional about culturally relevant care and taking care of the community. That's impressive. Taylor, you serve in mission services at Adventist Health. Why is Diversity, Equity & Inclusion critical to our mission of living God's love by inspiring health, wholeness and hope?

Taylor Laurie:               

Well, it really actually, I believe, goes back to the essential components that when we say we're intentionally living God's love, that we're looking at our fellow neighbors, friends, those within our community with those same eyes of love that God looks at us with. And so when we start to, as John was just sharing, when we start to slow down, listen, and take into context maybe it might be a challenge or barrier or the specific contextual needs that a person has that we then begin to bring hope alive, wholeness.

And we inspire for that person to care for themselves and for another person. And so it's really the direct outpouring of what it means when we say we're going to love our neighbor. And I think though the work that John is leading out at White Memorial capitalizes on that. That regardless of your background, what you might be facing, even participating in a gang, that that is no longer a barrier for you to experience this renewing of God's love in your life and we're going to do it in a tangible way and meet you where you are.

And that to me just encapsulates everything of, particularly when we say those first three words, living God's love. It's a unique, special type of love.

Joyce Newmyer:           

That's beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. I don't know about you guys, but I can talk about this all day long with you all. Unfortunately, we're going to need to move on to our last story. Thank you for joining us today. It's exciting to hear more about both of your passions for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. Our final story today is the whole picture. Not many people can trace their career choice back to a clear moment, but when Adventist Health’s Chief Nursing Officer, Jackie Liebowitz, watched nurses care for her grandfather after his heart attack in the 1970s, she knew, and she's never looked back.

Jackie is an inspiring leader who embraces change, complexity and, above all, belief in development, mentorship and mission. She has a unique gift of understanding the whole picture as she approaches care. You can read her story and many others at adventisthealth.org/story. Friends, thank you for connecting live. We'll see you here again next week. And until then, let's be a force for good.