Friends For Health To Dissolve In 2019

From FFH: Due to recent strategic changes made by the Lake County Health Department relating to the management of its public clinics, Friends for Health (FFH) will be dissolving after the 2018 calendar year. After months of deliberation and careful analysis, the FFH Board concluded that the organization will no longer be able to pursue its mission, and has decided to cease operations, realizing this left them no meaningful way to continue to support the patients at North Shore Health Center.

“FFH would like to extend their heartfelt gratitude to donors, community sponsors, and the Healthcare Foundation of Highland Park for their generous and sustaining support these past 16 years,” says Holly Kerr, Chair of the Friends for Health Board of Directors Founded in 2002, FFH was established as a non-profit 501c-3 organization dedicated to providing support for programs at the North Shore Health Center (NSHC) operated by the Lake County Health Department. Dedicated to transforming lives by promoting health and wellness and believing that quality health care should be available to everyone regardless of one’s ability to pay, FFH partnered with the City of Highland Park, the Lake County Health Department and the Healthcare Foundation of Highland Park to establish the NSHC, which opened its doors in 2006 at 1840 Green Bay Road. Three years later in December 2009, FFH received a National Institute of Health Award for outstanding public-private partnerships. For the past 12 years, the Clinic has and will continue to provide quality health care to under- and uninsured patients.

Annual grants from The Healthcare Foundation of Highland Park, FFH’s annual donor campaign, and grants from community organizations, foundations, and private corporations have provided specialty care services for those that needed referrals to outside physicians or diagnostic facilities as well as funded start-up programs such as breastfeeding counseling, Women’s health sessions, Diabetes education, mental health programs, and many others. FFH also mounted very successful on-line auctions in 2016 and 2017 with the support of generous local banks, restaurants, and businesses, as well as an annual end-of-year donor campaign. FFH is eternally appreciative of each and everyone’s kindness and cooperation. “We are proud of the achievements we have made since 2002,” says Kerr. “The dream became a reality when the North Shore Health Center opened in 2006 after raising the funds needed to get the clinic up and programs started, that will continue to run.” FFH has identified the following organizations to be recipients of the remaining funds, benefiting the same mission of “ensuring that quality health care is available to everyone in our community regardless of one’s ability to pay”

• The majority of FFH reserves will be donated to Highwood’s Fenix, a high-quality, comprehensive family healthcare facility that provides services to primarily low income and Spanish-speaking immigrant families in Lake County, Illinois.
• FFH will make a gift to Family Service of Lake County to provide mental health services to those in our community without the financial means to obtain it.
• Additionally, in keeping with our decision to dedicate 2017 donor funds to the memory of Dr. Bennett (Buddy) Sherman, a well-known pediatrician in the Highland Park area who was a very early Board Member of FFH, gifts will be made to two local day care centers; Highland Park Community Nursery School & Day Care Center and Tri-Con Child Care Center.
• The grant awarded by the Healthcare Foundation will continue to be used to fund existing programming at the NSHC through the 2018 calendar year.

Image via Shuttershock