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North Sound ACH

North Sound Accountable Community of Health

Network Dispatch

Network Dispatch: The Way Station

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Before the pandemic, people experiencing homelessness lacked access to primary medical and behavioral health care, and services we don’t always think about: toilets, showers, and laundry. COVID-19 created even more barriers to accessing these services. The Way Station provides a safe place to recuperate after a medical event, access to hygiene services, and comprehensive medical and behavioral health services that are currently lacking in our community.

The Way Station facility manager, Don Cook. Photo provided by Unity Care NW.

The Way Station celebrated its grand opening on November 12 – open Monday to Friday from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. in downtown Bellingham, 1500 N. State St. Partners instrumental to this facility include Unity Care NW, PeaceHealth, Whatcom County, and Opportunity Council, in addition to North Sound ACH Collaborative Action Network funding.

“We recognize that good health extends beyond the walls of our hospital and clinics,” said Chuck Prosper, chief executive at PeaceHealth St. Joseph Medical Center. “By investing in these community organizations, we are helping address the impact of social drivers of health and creating pathways to a healthier, more equitable future.”

Conversations about this idea started at Unity Care NW in 2017, and the project partners came together in 2019. The planning phase included site visits to similar facilities in other communities, and they recently hosted a group of representatives from Langley BC, WA Representative Joe Timmons, and Whatcom County Executive Satpal Sidhu to learn about The Way Station. 

They have stayed consistent to the original vision for The Way Station based on their 2018 needs assessment, with some additions to the services planned, including a hot box for cleaning items affected by body bugs, and providing clean socks, shirts, and underwear. PeaceHealth is working on advocating for Medicaid reimbursement for respite services (they will be the referrer; Opportunity Council will manage those services at the Way Station). However, they are facing challenges finding funding for ongoing operations: many funders want to support launching new programs, fewer will help sustain work that is ongoing and will be transformative in the long term. Unrestricted operating support is the most pressing need, especially for hygiene supplies. 

Rachel Lucy, director of community health for the Northwest Network of PeaceHealth, said supporting The Way Station aligns with PeaceHealth’s core values of respect and social justice, and the facility meets a very critical need in northwest Washington. “There are few circumstances more morally distressing for our health care workers than knowing that someone they just cared for in the hospital will be returning to life on the streets or unstable housing,” she noted.

The Way Station is located at 1500 N. State Street in Bellingham. Photos provided by Unity Care NW.

“In Whatcom County, this is the reality for patients experiencing homelessness following a hospital stay. This was the driving motivator” that brought PeaceHealth and its partners together to establish the new facility, she said.

Unity Care NW led public engagement through listening sessions and panel discussions with businesses and residents located around The Way Station site, helping them see the facility as one of the solutions to the challenges they expressed about the concentration of unhoused folks in the neighborhood. For example, Unity Care NW staff explained that The Way Station will offer a private and dignified place for folks to use bathrooms, reducing requests from individuals experiencing homelessness for use of businesses’ restrooms.

There will be acute walk-in care at The Way Station (addressing immediate health needs onsite and then refer them to a regular provider for primary care), as well as substance use disorder treatment. Don Cook is the new facility manager; a Unity Care NW employee of 20 years, who has built a great rapport with his clients and is highly skilled at de-escalation.

Network Dispatch: Mobile Mama Grows Internship Program

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Recently celebrating 10 years in the community, the perinatal therapy practice Mobile Mama is growing thanks to community support, such as the Collaborative Action Network Review Committee. Mobile Mama provides counseling services from conception through motherhood.

In 2017, a group of partners in Whatcom County formed a perinatal mental health task force to build community capacity to support families during pregnancy and the transition to parenthood Mobile Mama Therapy, Whatcom County Health and Community Services, Bellingham Center for Healthy Motherhood, and a parent advocate. Becoming fiscally sponsored by Whatcom Family & Community Network in 2021 allowed the task force to apply for and braid funds for a variety of specific projects. One project is Mobile Mama’s Master’s Level Clinical Counseling Internship in Perinatal Mental Health. In 2023, the ACH CAN and the Mount Baker Foundation funded the expansion of this program from a one intern pilot project to three internship slots. In 2024, the Healthy Children’s Fund contracted directly with Mobile Mama to support three more interns over the next two years. Read more about this program at Whatcom Talk [click here].

The recent grant from the ACH includes funding to conduct a feasibility study on replicating the Mobile Mama internship program and expanding the perinatal mental health workforce to other areas in Whatcom County and into Skagit, and San Juan counties. These three counties share perinatal mental health capacity-building work with support from Perinatal Support Washington and the Department of Children, Youth, and Families, as well as have access to PeaceHealth infrastructure, including hospitals, clinical practices, and community benefit grant opportunities.

The internship program directly increases access to care by developing a local mental health workforce skilled in addressing perinatal mood and anxiety disorders who work with Medicaid enrollees.

2024-2025 Interns shown here – Meredith LaPlante, Melody Eastman, Aliya Qadri, Rachel Jones. Photo provided by Mobile Mama.

At a recent visit by ACH staff, Mobile Mama shared the internships are going well –each intern provides intakes and counseling for up to 12 clients per week, and receives advanced training in perinatal mental health and supervision hours each week. Applications for this internship have “skyrocketed” as word has spread! Mobile Mama hopes the upcoming applicant pool will include more students culturally and linguistically matched to the community.

Because there are more clients than capacity to serve, Mobile Mama continues to seek sustainable funding to support the internship program, as they cannot bill insurance providers for internship services.

Mobile Mama is looking to partner with the Managed Care Organizations (MCOs) and others, to better understand how to advocate for Medicaid changes, negotiate rates, and support programming, as well as being part of discussions on navigating the issues around credentialing, reimbursement rates, and billing for interns under the supervision of trained clinical supervisors with MCOs. To connect, reach out to Michelle@MobileMama.com.

Network Dispatch: Cultural Alimentos Project

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Community-Centered Solutions: Cultural Alimentos Project

About to launch phase two of this project, the collaborating organizations – Bellingham Food Bank, Northwest Agricultural Business Center, and Refugee and Immigrant Services NW – have made great strides to increase food security for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) and refugee, immigrant, and migrant (RIM) populations!

Approved for funding by the North Sound ACH Review Committee last year, the Cultural Alimentos Project focuses on expanding knowledge about food security needs and simultaneously building strategies for longer term investment in food systems that support BIPOC/RIM community members.

North Sound ACH team members visited the Bellingham Food Bank site in May 2024, meeting with Mike Cohen and Stephanie Sisson (Bellingham Food Bank), Steve Bader of Agape Food Bank, Alex Perez (Northwest Agricultural Business Center), and Van Kuno (Refugee & Immigrant Services NW).

Steve Bader of Agape Food Bank, and Stephanie Sisson and Mike Cohen of Bellingham Food Bank.
A sample of food available at the Bellingham Food Bank
Seen at the Bellingham Food Bank
Bellingham Food Bank Executive Directory Mike Cohen shows the warehouse.

Bellingham Food Bank surveyed their clients in 2022, asking about cultural food preferences, ease of locations, and to find out which populations were missing from utilizing their services. This project builds upon those survey results, and led to creating advisory groups composed of community members from the BIPOC communities they intend to serve.

Project leads said they’ve learned the importance of not rushing the process when it comes to building trust within the community. They recently hired a consultant to help them hear and learn from BIPOC communities. As a result, they’ve noticed a rise in the number of people joining the advisory groups, including members from Afghanistan, Ukraine, Pacific Islands, Vietnam, Pakistan, India, and various Latino and indigenous communities.

They’ve recently learned of key transportation barriers, residual fear of federal immigration policies that were never passed or have been rescinded (that threatened to penalize immigrants for accessing benefits), and continued lack of services tailored to BIPOC and RIM communities.

One significant finding was that people from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Pacific Islander communities consistently reported a lack of services tailored to them. Often, they received written information and were then turned away. This issue was a common theme during advisory group meetings with these communities.

Stay tuned for more updates!

CORRECTION: Agape Service Project Food Bank is not a part of the Cultural Alimentos Project. They are a food bank that works closely with Bellingham Food Bank, especially around sourcing culturally relevant foods. They were also not a part of the 2022 Bellingham Food Bank client survey mentioned in the previous version of this post. The writer apologizes for the error.

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We’ll be sharing more Network Dispatches in the coming months, about the projects created by Collaborative Action Network members.