Rose Padilla Johnson, the CEO of Davis Street Community Center, has served the San Leandro, California organization for almost 30 years. Her extensive background in social service work and fundraising has enabled her to understand and address the needs of the area’s lower-income families for food, healthcare, childcare, and employment resources. At the center, Rose Padilla Johnson of San Leandro oversees a budget of more than $10 million, in service to thousands of Alameda County residents a year.
Well over 1 million of California’s children live in low-income communities, representing about 13 percent of children in the state. This brings numerous problems stemming from a lack of resource equity, including health disparities that can last a lifetime.
These issues particularly affect children of color, Latino children, and Native children, with all these groups between five and seven times more likely to grow up in low-income neighborhoods than white peers. Among the disparities that affect children in these communities is lack of access to affordable, quality medical attention, lack of access to nutritious food, and exposure to environmental toxins.
As inequity-related deficits build-up, they result in disproportionate numbers of people of color developing chronic diseases, putting them farther behind others in the ability to build well-paying careers and to raise their own families in safety.
Davis Street’s medical, dental, and behavioral health clinics aim to address some of these inequities, and its childcare centers and family support programs additionally work on leveling the playing field early to help ensure greater lifelong health and resiliency.
