LEWISTON, Idaho – The Lewis Clark Valley Health Foundation elected officers for the year and added five members to the Board of Community Advisors recently.
During the foundation’s annual meeting, Dr. John Rusche, retired physician and former legislator, was re-elected to serve as Board President. Nancy Chaney, co-owner of Veterinary Ophthalmic Specialties in Moscow and former mayor of Moscow, is the new Vice Chair. Darby Zick, Coordinator of Clearwater Emergency Services in Orofino, is the new Secretary.
Selected to serve on the board were Sara Bennett, owner of Riverside Recovery of Lewiston, Helen Brown, clinical associate professor in the Public Health and Nutrition, Exercise, Sport, and Health Sciences at the University of Idaho, Zick, Eric Peterson, a community volunteer from Lewiston, and Bert Sahlberg, public information specialist at Lewis-Clark State College. The board is now at 15 members.
The Board was established by the conversion and sale of St. Joseph Regional Medical Center in 2017 and advises the Foundation in distributing health-care related grants.
Board members who finished their terms and left the board are Tracy Flynn, Lewis-Clark State College nursing professor, and Beth Patzer, Director of Behavioral Health at St. Joseph Regional Medical Center.
Rusche thanked the outgoing officers who played a big role in coordinating the Foundation’s second grant cycle as well as getting the Foundation off the ground.
“The Board of Community Advisors is extremely grateful to these people who gave back to their neighbors and our communities through hours of service,” Rusche said. “Setting up the grant process and advising the Foundation Trustee on donations is very demanding from a volunteer’s point of view. The Board and our area’s citizens appreciate their efforts.”
The Lewis-Clark Valley Healthcare Foundation was established in July of 2017 by the Idaho Attorney General Lawrence Wasden in agreement with Ascension Health and RCCH Healthcare Partners The Foundation was created to serve as a long-term regional resource and received $25 million from the transaction to foster health, wellness, and disease prevention.
The LCVH Foundation administers the resulting charitable endowment that benefits the health and wellness needs of the people in the nine county region the hospital once served. Those counties are Clearwater, Idaho, Latah, Lewis and Nez Perce in northern Idaho; Asotin, Garfield and Whitman in southeastern Washington; and Wallowa in northeastern Oregon. It is structured to provide a multi-generational benefit for the region.
Idaho Trust Bank is the Trustee of the Foundation.
Last week, the foundation announced it opened a Fast Track grant program for up to $10,000 to help qualifying health-related non-profit organizations in the nine-county area deal with COVID-19, the coronavirus pandemic.
For more information on the LCVH Foundation or the Fast Track grant program, visit www.lewisclarkhealth.org, or contact Rusche at either jmrusche@gmail.com, or 208-750-6048, or Desiree Prohaska, executive vice president and chief wealth management officer at Idaho Trust Bank, at dnp@idahotrust.com.