San Diego, CA. March 25, 2020. In the midst of our current pandemic reality and the severe disruptions being felt at all levels of society, we would like to pause to send our best wishes to San Diego leader and friend, John Ohanian, who will be starting a new position in Sacramento in April. John, CEO of 2-1-1 San Diego since 2007, will be joining the California Health and Human Services Agency to serve as its Chief Data Officer and Senior Advisor on Innovation.

If we could, we’d be throwing a big farewell party for John! This message will have to suffice for now.

While we are going to sincerely miss our friend and partner of many years, the broader California community is gaining a committed and passionate innovator to help lead us into the next phase of data connection and functional analysis statewide.

Under John’s leadership, 2-1-1 San Diego has become the region’s central information source for health, human and social services, providing more than one million connections for 500,000 unique clients each year.

“2-1-1 San Diego is an innovator in social services technology advancements,” says Robert McCray, Board Trustee, Alliance Healthcare Foundation. “Their proactive initiatives have led to personal centricity and data connectedness for our community’s service providers, enabling the delivery of quality services for San Diego’s most vulnerable citizens.” The Community Information Exchange (CIE) is a vital piece of this success.

In 2011, 2-1-1 and a group of community leaders conceived the Community Information Exchange (CIE), an integrated technology platform for an ecosystem of multidisciplinary network partners that use a shared language and resource database to provide proactive, holistic, and person-centered care. The initial funding for CIE came from Alliance Healthcare Foundation’s Innovation Initiative.

“John is a visionary community leader, who demonstrates the principle of servant leadership and has successfully driven the shift within 2-1-1 towards social enterprise—in service of increasing their capacity to support our most vulnerable community members” explains Elizabeth Dreicer, Board Trustee, Alliance Healthcare Foundation. Today, San Diego’s 2-1-1/CIE serves as a model for organizations nationwide.

 

2-1-1 San Diego’s announcement also indicated that Bill York, Executive Vice President of 2-1-1 San Diego, has been appointed President and CEO effective as of John’s departure. “From our many years in partnership with the 2-1-1 San Diego executive team, we are confident that Bill and team will manage John’s transition well, and that our community will continue receiving the highest quality programs and support from San Diego 2-1-1,” said Sarah Lyman, Executive Director, Alliance Healthcare Foundation.

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About 2-1-1 San Diego

2-1-1 San Diego’s mission is to serve as a nexus to bring the community (organizations) together to help people efficiently access appropriate services, and provide vital data and trend information for proactive community planning.

About 2-1-1 San Diego’s CIE

Community Information Exchange (CIE) is an ecosystem comprised of multidisciplinary network partners that use a shared language, a resource database, and an integrated technology platform to deliver enhanced community care planning. Care planning tools enable partners to integrate data from multiple sources and make bi-directional referrals to create a shared longitudinal record. By focusing on these core components, a CIE enables communities to shift away from a reactive approach to providing care toward proactive, holistic, person-centered care.

##########About Alliance Healthcare Foundation

We work to advance health and wellness for the most vulnerable in San Diego and Imperial counties through collaborative funding, convening and advocacy.

We envision a San Diego and Imperial County region where equitable health resources lead to universal health and well-being. We believe wellness is a state of complete physical, mental, spiritual, economic and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.

We currently operate a portfolio of five programs:

i2 Innovation Initiative — also referred to as “venture philanthropy”—based on the thesis that innovation capital (often high risk, high reward) is needed to transform the current paradigm (high cost and poor outcomes) and improve quality, increase capacity and reduce costs;

Mission Support—based on the belief that trusting those closest to our constituents and providing core operating support for great organizations will best advance our mission;

Responsive Funding—based on the belief that it is important to be responsive to time-sensitive community needs and opportunities;

InvestUp—based on the belief that it is important to actively and strategically be looking for ways to meaningfully advance our mission and it is worth spending some or all of our corpus—beyond the earnings off of our endowment—if we can substantively, sustainably and positively change the dynamics; and

Impact Investments–based on the thesis that we can activate our investment portfolio to achieve more positive impact.

Our History. In 1982, the San Diego Community Healthcare Alliance (Alliance) created the first Preferred Provider Organization/Network (PPO) in the United States. From 1989 through 1994, the Alliance funded Alliance Healthcare Foundation (AHF) through profits from its Community Care Network (CCN) operations. In 1994, Alliance sold CCN to a national healthcare company and channeled the proceeds from CCN’s sale into an endowment of $83 million for AHF. That endowment has enabled funding of approximately $64 million (USD) in direct funding and approximately $41 million (USD) from national and local funding partners in San Diego and Imperial counties. Our endowment holds approximately $80 million in assets today, with funding for programs and operations derived from endowment investment earnings.

AHF Media contact:
Karen Winston, Communications Director, Alliance Healthcare Foundation
P 858-348-6472 E karen.winston@alliancehf.org