About Us

At Santa Clara Family Health Foundation, we believe that health care is a basic human right. We promote access to affordable, quality health care for all residents within Santa Clara County by supporting Santa Clara Family Health Plan through resource development and outreach.

Santa Clara Family Health Foundation (SCFHF) is a nonprofit, 501(c)(3) organization whose primary focus is on raising funds to support the Healthy Kids program and the Children’s Health Initiative in Santa Clara County. Through SCFHF, community leaders, community members, foundations, corporations, local businesses, friends, and other supporters can contribute funds to help achieve the goal of providing every child in Santa Clara County with access to quality health care through insurance.

Founded in 2000, SCFHF was established by Santa Clara Family Health Plan (SCFHP) to redirect excess funds from their risk pools back to the local community and receive funds, when needed, for research and community outreach.

During this same period, a grassroots movement initiated by labor-affiliated Working Partnerships USA and faith-based People Acting in Community Together (PACT) was underway to improve the availability and accessibility of health care for children in Santa Clara County. While Medi-Cal and Healthy Families* were already serving many low-income children, many other eligible children were still, for various reasons, uninsured. Large numbers of needy children remained without access to affordable health care coverage because their immigration status or their family income rendered them ineligible for existing subsidized programs.

In December 2000, because of the efforts of Working Partnerships and PACT, the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors approved the use of tobacco settlement funds to create a first-of-its-kind health insurance program designed to fill the gap left by Medi-Cal and Healthy Families* coverage. The Board of Supervisors directed the Santa Clara Valley Health and Hospital System (SCVHHS) to develop a plan to make comprehensive health insurance available and accessible to Santa Clara County’s uninsured children.

SCVHHS undertook the project along with PACT, Working Partnerships, Santa Clara County Social Services Agency, and Santa Clara Family Health Plan. These founding organizations created the Healthy Kids program, which would, upon implementation, be managed by SCFHP. In addition, these organizations established an extensive outreach plan known as the Children’s Health Initiative, or CHI, to promote enrollment in Medi-Cal, Healthy Families*, and Healthy Kids. To this day, CHI continues in its efforts, going out into the community to locate and provide application assistance for all of the county’s eligible children.

With the onset of the Healthy Kids program and the Children’s Health Initiative, SCFHF began focusing its activities on raising funds for these two worthy causes. Initial startup and ongoing funding came from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. Since then, the list of supporters has grown exponentially. Today, as more and more eligible children are found for the Healthy Kids program, SCFHF’s goal is to obtain sufficient funding to ensure that every eligible child can be enrolled.

Other Work

Community Outreach Prevention and Education Program:  The primary objective of the Community Outreach Prevention and Education (COPE) program is to identify uninsured children and assist their parents in applying for and enrolling their children into subsidized health coverage.  Since its establishment in 2011, the COPE program has established almost 40 partnerships with community-based organizations throughout Santa Clara County and has identified over 1,800 uninsured children.

For more information on the COPE program, click here. 

Baby Gateway:  Launched in December 2012, the Baby Gateway Project’s (BGP) primary goals are to: (1) increase access to health coverage and a medical home for newborns; (2) decrease emergency room use for children under the age of one; and (3) support Medi-Cal parents in creating a safe, healthy, and loving home in which to raise their children. 

The BGP is being piloted at O’Connor Hospital in San Jose and Saint Louise Regional Hospital in Gilroy.  We are currently preparing to launch the BGP at Valley Medical Center in San Jose within the next coming months. 

In the first six months, the BGP intends on serving 1,440 mothers.

For more information on the Baby Gateway Project, please contact Emily Hennessy at ehennessy@scfhp.com or 408.874.1912. 

Childhood Obesity:

• The “5 Keys to Raising Healthy, Happy Eaters” class is for parents to learn the structure and support within which children are able to make healthy choices.  It is a 2 hour, one time class for parents who have young children from ages 0-5.  The project serves parent of 800 children a year.

​For more information on the 5 Keys class, click here. 

• ​10 Steps to a Healthier You! is a series of classes for childcare providers and their parents to learn how to develop and teach children good eating habits, become and remain physically active, minimize TV time, and get enough sleep. 

​More information on the 10 Steps to a Healthier You! is coming soon. 

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To view SCFHF's audited financials for fiscal year ending June 30, 2012, click here.

To view SCFHF's IRS 990 Form for fiscal year ending June 30, 2012, click here.

For more information on Santa Clara Family Health Plan, click here.

*On January 1, 2013, Healthy Families began its transition to Medi-Cal.  For information on Healthy Families transitiion to Medi-Cal, click here.