Cleveland Cavaliers & CHC Bring Together Community Leaders

Early this month, incoming CHC National Board Chair Kevin Clayton, who serves as Vice President of Diversity, Inclusion & Community Engagement for the Cleveland Cavaliers and Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse organization, hosted CHC and numerous national and community leaders in Cleveland, Ohio for a series of events, including an invitation-only breakfast convening and community-based projects visits.

The Future of Health in Cleveland Breakfast focused on the social determinants of health and their impact on health equity and health justice, featuring:

• Len Komoroski: Chief Executive Officer, Cleveland Cavaliers Operating Company
• Kevin Clayton: VP Diversity, Inclusion & Community Engagement, Cleveland Cavaliers Operating Company
• Dr. Akram Boutros: President and CEO, MetroHealth Systems
• Ash Shehata: Principal, National Sector Leader, Healthcare and Life Sciences, KPMG
• Dr. Charles Modlin: Founder and Director Minority Men’s Health Center: Executive Director of Minority Health; Kidney Transplant Surgeon and Urologist, Cleveland Clinic
• Patricia DePompei: President, University Hospitals MacDonald Women’s Hospital and Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital

All Cleveland’s major health systems came together at this event, which provided a rare opportunity for these leaders to be in the same room together discussing these important topics. All speakers and participants agreed more needs to be done as data shows health outcomes are not improving, and in underserved communities actually declining. One important first step is all healthcare systems working together with community advocates to address health disparities head on.

The Community-based projects visits included touring innovative, transformative sites such as the Lincoln-West School of Science and Health at Metrohealth. This first and only high school in the nation inside a hospital focuses on providing opportunities, practical internships, and employable skills. More than a third of the first graduating class spoke English as a second language.

CHC and community leaders also visited Rid-All Green Partnership, an urban farm that redeveloped vacant city land. This program established a demonstration project offering holistic, nutritional food and teaching sustainable practices and urban agriculture to empower the next generation, turn neighborhoods into viable communities, change health disparities, create jobs, and encourage entrepreneurship. Rid-All’s innovative approaches include aquaponics, composting and soil creation, aquaculture, comic book-style education for young people, and more.

Community Health Charities (CHC) brings together leading nonprofit organizations and businesses together to improve communities and transform lives. For more than 60 years, we have brought people together to engage, educate, and empower individuals and businesses to take action to improve health and wellbeing.

Today, CHC continues to bring business and health sector leaders together to identify and support interventions in specific communities concerning disaster relief and community resilience, women’s health, and other health related initiatives.

To learn more about how CHC is building healthy communities by addressing root causes, visit our website.

About Community Health Charities
For more than 65 years, Community Health Charities (CHC) has been creating stronger, healthier communities. We building capacity for nonprofits by raising awareness, amplifying their message, and driving more funds and supporters to their cause; increase employee engagement and social impact for companies through giving, volunteering, health resources, engagement tools, community partnerships, and more; bring leaders together at the national, regional, and local levels to educate, elevate key issues, and improve overall social impact and community health; build community partnerships to harness collective efforts and coalitions; working together to tackle projects that improve community health and address root causes at scale. Visit https://healthcharities.org or @healthcharities.