Valley Health Foundation’s chief believes health care is public good
When the Valley Health Foundation was established in 1988, its mission was to support Santa Clara County’s only public hospital.
But in the last 37 years, that health care system has drastically grown as the county has bought up several struggling hospitals. Now, the Santa Clara Valley Healthcare System — the second largest county-owned system in the state — operates four hospitals and 15 clinics. Its flagship hospital — Valley Medical Center — also manages only one of three dual burn and trauma centers between Los Angeles to the Oregon border.
As the county’s health care system has expanded, so has the work of the Valley Health Foundation. President and Executive Director Michael Elliott credits his predecessor, Chris Wilder, for transforming it from a “sleepy little hospital foundation” to the “giant” it is today.
Wilder spent 18 years at the helm of the organization before stepping down in 2021 following a massive stroke; Elliott was the first full time hire he made back in 2007.
In 2024, the Valley Health Foundation reported $18.6 million in revenue and support. Those dollars went to initiatives like purchasing imaging devices for Valley Med’s Burn Center that measure wounds and detect bacteria early, and establishing a grant program to help public school districts establish new wellness centers.
We caught up with Elliott to learn more about the foundation’s work as it heads into yet another tumultuous time in the health care system as a result of cuts to the federal Medicaid program.
This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity and length.
Q: What is the main mission of the Valley Health Foundation?
A: We have three pillars: support, innovate, advocate. In many ways we are like every other hospital affiliated foundation. We raise money from the community to support direct patient care throughout the hospital because particularly for a system like ours, there are always going to be needs. We will never have enough public funds to address every challenge. We can also use philanthropy dollars to do a lot of innovation work so experimenting with new models of care, experimenting with new technology to deliver care.
A lot of the programs that the hospital is best known for started with philanthropy dollars. Our Pediatric Health Lifestyle Center, which is an incredibly successful program that operates on our pediatric outpatient clinics, is a lifestyle modification program for kids that are screened at risk for diabetes and obesity and includes consultation with nutritionists. It includes family education programs, taking kids out to our county parks and getting exercise and helping families with food assistance. That was all pioneered with philanthropy dollars to try to see if this is a model that can work and if we can prove efficacy and show that it improves patient care and that it potentially saves the county money, it becomes part of the county budget and goes on forever.
Q: Why is Valley Health Foundation’s role so important?
A: There is no greater purpose in a democratic society of philanthropy not only making an impact in terms of whatever services it is trying to deliver, but to do that in a context where you are building the strength of our democratic institutions. Philanthropy has a unique role in that. Philanthropy can do things that the public sector can’t. I think we can try new ideas much more quickly and do so in a way that doesn’t risk taxpayer dollars.
Public systems can be somewhat risk adverse. We celebrate risk in the private sector — if someone tries a new idea and their company takes off and then crashes and burns we don’t think that entrepreneur is a failure, we celebrate that they tried something that was new and innovative. It’s not always the same in the public sector, public sectors aren’t always rewarded for trying new things and losing money. Philanthropy can play a really important role on the innovation side and then I think it can play a really important role just on holding up our public institutions as something that we all have a stake in protecting.
I feel very strongly about the idea that we just can’t leave it to the government to make sure our public institutions are thriving and here for the next generation. It takes all of us doing that together.
Q: What do you see the foundation’s role to be in light of cuts to Medicaid?
A: I think in the short term, we’ve got some work to do in navigating and responding to the federal Medicaid changes that are coming and it’s going to take a lot of experimentation and hard work to find the best ways to keep people covered. The short term challenge now is that coverage for the undocumented is going to end. That’s causing confusion with people who are here with legal status and still eligible for benefits and making sure people don’t drop out of coverage because they’re confused on the new rules.
There’s going to be some advocacy at the state level that we’re certainly going to be a part of in finding ways for the state to at least shore up our core safety net hospitals in key population centers around the state so that we can keep the lights on and that’s a big part of our strategy. I think there’s a question beyond that no matter what happens in the next election cycle we think it’s unlikely that you’re going to flip a switch and just restore the federal Medicaid program to exactly how it was before.
If and when this current administration comes to an end and funding for Medicaid is restored and the state thinks about what that program will look like on the state end, are we just trying to rebuild what we had before or is there a better way for us to ensure that all residents of our community have access to health services? I think that’s a piece that we’re going to be looking at.
There’s so much to do and some of it is genuinely terrifying but there is some real opportunity for us to do some exciting things and I’m going to focus on the positive and find opportunities for us to advance our mission and to increase access to health care services for all residents of this county.
Q: What has been the most meaningful work you’ve done at the foundation?
A: Certainly the pandemic response was — for all of us that went through it — an incredibly searing moment. We actually couldn’t keep up with the outpouring of support from the community. To the extent some days we had to call Telecom to increase our voicemail box capacity because we couldn’t answer the phone fast enough. I had never had that experience before. It was this incredible moment of we had high school students printing face shields in their garage, we had Fortune 500 companies retooling their assembly lines to make stuff for us, we had faith communities and everyone else in between really stepping up.
Our role in that was during the initial stages was a way for people to donate physical items. Then it was an incredible outpouring of financial contributions, which allowed us to help support the standing up of all those mass vaccination sites. I think our skillset of knowing how to create energy around a way to make a difference and a way to cultivate donors and cultivate volunteers, obviously we’re used to doing that on a small scale, but suddenly we became the hub for ways to support our hospitals during the pandemic. All told, there was over $30 million in cash and in-kind donations. I think we had some 5 million units of PPE donated that we were able to get out to health centers and our hospitals.
MICHAEL ELLIOT PROFILE
Company: Valley Health Foundation
Role: President and CEO
Age: 49
Birthplace: Madrid
Current City: San Jose
Education: Bachelor of Science in social thought and political economy at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst
FIVE FACTS ABOUT MICHAEL ELLIOTT
1. Married to a public school teacher and dad to two daughters.
2. Drummer in The Idol Hands Band, the Santa Clara Valley Healthcare “house band”
3. Avid supporter of Liverpool Football Club.
4. Once had a short phone call with Harry Belafonte.
5. Career ambition out of college was to become a high school history teacher; still hoping to do that.