FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 9, 2003

Contact:
David Littlefield, TCWF
(818) 702-1900

Sev Williams, i.e. communications, LLC
(415) 616-3930

NURSING AND PHYSICIAN LEADERS NAMED TCWF’S CHAMPIONS OF HEALTH PROFESSIONS DIVERSITY

Linda Burnes Bolton, Pilar De La Cruz-Reyes and Bob Montoya Are Awarded $25,000 Each for Their Leadership in Increasing Diversity in Health

Los Angeles — The California Wellness Foundation (TCWF) will present its inaugural Champion of Health Professions Diversity Award to three pioneers who have helped increase diversity in the health workforce. The honorees are Linda Burnes Bolton of Los Angeles, Pilar De La Cruz-Reyes of Fresno and Bob Montoya of Sacramento. Each will receive a $25,000 grant in recognition of their work and achievements at an awards ceremony in Los Angeles on Tuesday, June 10, 2003.

Each of these awardees is a pioneer who has overcome significant barriers to become a distinguished health professional. But that was only a start. Frustrated by the low numbers of students from underserved communities entering health care professions, and not content with letting others struggle on their own, they began mentoring, teaching and training programs to change the status quo. By changing the faces of those providing health care in California, the health and wellness of underserved communities has improved, with a greater number of providers, increased cultural competency, and higher levels of patient trust.

“Research indicates that physicians and other health care professionals of color are more likely to work in low-income communities whose members have difficulty accessing care,” said Gary L. Yates, TCWF president and CEO. “Diversifying California’s health workforce is an important strategy to address the worsening crisis of access to health care in this state. It is vitally important that we learn from these innovators.”

According to the 2000 U.S. Census, no single racial or ethnic group constitutes a majority of California’s population. However, available data clearly indicates that California’s health care workforce fails to reflect the diversity of its population. While more than 50 percent of Californians are from communities of color, only ten percent of physicians are. The picture is similar among nurses, where racial and ethnic minorities make up only 12 percent of the workforce. Increasing health workforce diversity is likely to impact the health of underserved communities through increased access and quality of care, cultural competence of care, and health care leadership.

The three awardees have influenced and inspired hundreds of lives through their own accomplishments and the innovative programs they have created. Burnes Bolton, vice president and chief nursing officer at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and Research Institute, has instituted a cultural competency training program for all staff. De La Cruz-Reyes, most recently the executive director of the Community University and Education Development Services at Community Medical Centers, started programs to pay the tuition for minority health care professionals and to provide hospital work experience to low-income parents. Montoya worked within California’s Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development to establish an innovative program that recruits, supports and prepares minority students to enter health professional schools.

Linda Burnes Bolton, Dr. P.H., R.N., F.A.A.N.
Burnes Bolton was the first African American to graduate from the Arizona State School of Nursing. She also holds a Dr.P.H. and is a fellow in the American Academy of Nursing (F.A.A.N.). In addition to serving as vice president and chief nursing officer at Cedars-Sinai, Burnes Bolton is a faculty member at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Over the last 20 years, she has played a vital leadership role in raising issues of diversification in nursing education and practice.

Burnes Bolton is a member of the prestigious Academy of Nursing, the California Strategic Planning for Nursing Committee on Diversity, the Institute for Nursing and Health Care, and the National Advisory Council on Nursing Education and Practice. She is also a past president of the National Black Nurses Association. Burnes Bolton advised on the formation of the Asian American Pacific Islander Nurses Association and is on the editorial board of the journal of the National Hispanic Nurses Association.

During her tenure at Cedars-Sinai, Burnes Bolton’s division was designated as a Magnet Nursing Service by the American Nurses Credentialing Center, the highest award given to hospitals by the nursing profession. As a faculty member at UCLA and UCSF, Burnes Bolton actively recruits and supports applicants from traditionally underrepresented racial and ethnic groups for admission into the graduate nursing program. She has also mentored eight doctoral students from communities of color in the U.C. system.

“It’s not enough to increase minority admissions and set up an office of minority health in the school,” states Burnes Bolton. “It’s important to hold every faculty member responsible for getting people through. You develop success stories. You provide mentorship and support.”

Pilar De La Cruz-Reyes, R.N., M.S.N.
As a youngster, De La Cruz-Reyes labored in the fields alongside her father and studied late into the night because her parents valued education. She decided to become a nurse at age seven and turned down a full scholarship to a business school in order to pursue nursing at O’Connor School of Nursing in San Jose. She attended the University of Santa Clara and California State University, Dominguez Hills.

De La Cruz-Reyes’ career at Community Medical Centers (CMC) in Fresno progressed from staff nurse to frontline manager of acute critical care to director of nursing services to executive director of the Community University and Education Development Services. On May 20, 2003, she assumed the role of chief nurse executive at the Fresno Heart Hospital.

Throughout her career, De La Cruz-Reyes has championed the needs of underserved communities. She established the first Cultural Competency Task Force for CMC and developed the Nursing Paradigm Program in collaboration with Fresno City College, which provides training for hospital employees to enter the nursing program. She also developed the Community Job Institute, offering low-income parents living near the hospital an opportunity to gain work experience and training in the hospital. De La Cruz-Reyes has also personally mentored over 35 young people who sought health care careers.

“I believe that minority health professionals can sometimes relate better to patients,” De La Cruz-Reyes said. “Health care is hard enough to understand in English, let alone if you don’t speak the language. It’s important that minorities understand what is being done to them, understand what preventative health care is about. There needs to be more trust in health care.”

Bob Montoya, M.D., M.P.H.
Montoya started advocating for diversity among physicians and other health professionals while still attending medical school at the University of Southern California (USC), where he was instrumental in establishing the Office of Minority Affairs and the National Chicano Health Organization. After graduation from USC, Montoya completed his internship at Kaiser Permanente Hospital in Oakland and then obtained a Masters of Public Health and completed his Preventive Medicine residency at UCLA.

Montoya had an impressive record of state employment. Within the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development, he initiated and directed California’s Health Professions Career Opportunity Program that recruited and supported the preparation and admission of minority students to health professional schools.

Montoya subsequently initiated and directed the Minority Medical Education and Training Shortage Area Elective/Preceptorship Program and the California Shortage Area Medical Matching Program. The purpose of both programs was to prepare medical students, physician assistant and nurse practitioner students and residents for practice in shortage areas and then to match them to jobs and positions at shortage area clinics and practices. Montoya has gained the respect of admissions officers and deans at public and private universities nationwide and is a frequent presenter on college campuses.

“Minority medical students, once they have been recruited, prepared, admitted and trained, are four-to-seven times more likely to practice in minority-shortage areas than are their non-minority classmates,” said Montoya. “We have about seven million Californians overwhelmingly minorities, who live in shortage areas and often get inadequate, late and costly care in emergency rooms and hospitals. More minority doctors is a very cost-effective way of improving health care and saving health funds.”

The Foundation established Diversity in the Health Professions as a grantmaking priority area in 2000. The goal of this priority area is to support multiple strategies to increase diversity in the health professions in California. Grants are given to organizations that provide pipeline programs, scholarships, mentoring programs, internships and fellowships that support and advance career opportunities for people of color in the health professions, including allied health and public health professions.

Burnes Bolton, De La Cruz-Reyes, and Montoya will be joined by TCWF directors and staff as well as grantees of the Foundation’s Diversity in the Health Professions Priority Area at the Los Angeles ceremony on June 10, 2003.

“Each of these champions has developed innovative and effective practices that promote diversity in California’s health workforce,” said Alicia Procello, TCWF program director for the Diversity in Health Professions Priority Area. “As a result of their efforts, many more health professionals are working in traditionally underserved communities, helping to decrease the well-documented disparities in health for people of color in our state.”

The California Wellness Foundation is an independent, private foundation created in 1992, with a mission to improve the health of the people of California by making grants for health promotion, wellness education and disease prevention. The Foundation provides funding in eight priority areas: Diversity in Health Professions, Environmental Health, Healthy Aging, Mental Health, Teenage Pregnancy Prevention, Violence Prevention, Women’s Health, and Work and Health. It also provides funding for other health issues through its Special Projects Fund. Since its first year of operation, TCWF has awarded 3,133 grants totaling $400 million. It is one of the state’s largest private foundations, making an average of $40 million in grants each year in pursuit of its mission.

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