"We have the opportunity to raise the health status of an entire community."

Gordon Russell, Board Member

Decades of experience building companies and support for nonprofit, Board member Gordon Russell knows a good investment. When he came up with the idea of building a Center for Health Promotion, he said RFHC can be the staging ground for improving the health of a whole community. He backed his idea by contributing the lion's share to construct the Center for Health Promotion. The federal government's timely American Recovery and Reinvestment Act stimulus funding covered the rest.

Our spacious Center for Health Promotion has multiple uses.

• Health education services
• Chronic disease prevention and self-management services
• Membership services and eligibility/enrollment in public health coverage

Stanford Health Library

Thanks to Stanford Hospital & Clinics, the Center is also home to a branch of the Stanford Health Library. This gives our patients and the medical and health education staff accessible and free access to Stanford Library's nationally-recognized, multilingual and multimedia health information collection. The library is staffed by a Stanford bilingual medical librarian who can collaborate with RFHC's medical and health education staff in creating multi-cultural programs, classes and lectures for the specific needs of the communities served by the Ravenswood Family Health Center. The branch features materials in Spanish, Tongan, and other languages as needed. Read the article announcing its opening in April 2010.

• Patients are given a "health library prescription" by their primary care provider to take advantage of the Stanford Health Library to learn more about their medical condition.
• Medical providers can ask the medical librarian to find research papers on medical topics.
• The public can browse the multi-lingual library and can use one of the Library's 3 computers to access the internet.