It's Valley Gives Day!

It’s December 10, and I’m especially excited about Valley Gives Day this year. Valley Gives challenges organizations to boost their presence online and expand their base, a challenge completely in sync with our Tapestry 2.0 goals of enhancing our infrastructure to meet 21^st century challenges. For over 40 years Tapestry has been supported by a community of dedicated supporters who have fought with us to ensure access to care, especially for those who are often left out or who need their voices heard. As we move the organization forward, I’m excited about the possibilities of social media to help expand our base of support and to connect a new generation of young people to this important mission.

Today, I invite you to take a look inside Tapestry and hear from our staff about their commitment to bringing front-line health care to the whole community: review our Facebook feed for photos and messages from staff that we have been sharing. You can also keep up with us on Facebook and Twitter for breaking updates about our programs throughout Western MA, or go directly to our Valley Gives page to understand why Tapestry matters in the Valley. And if you’re moved to support our work today for the first time, our board of directors will turbo-charge your gift by adding $215. I hope you’ll join us today in helping to meet the most urgent community health needs with dignity and respect.   

Welcoming Our New Chief Program Officer

I am very pleased to announce Suzanne Smith as Tapestry Health’s new Chief Program Officer. Suzanne holds expertise in both reproductive health and HIV/AIDS and has played a leading role in community health organizations locally and around the world, including most recently at the Holyoke Health Center. Suzanne is an expert in Tapestry Health’s programs—she was previously with Tapestry for 12 years, working in our clinics and eventually becoming Director of Health Services. We are thrilled to have her back!

Filling the role of Chief Program Officer is a crucial step that will help position Tapestry to thrive in the long term. As a member of the senior executive team, Suzanne will be responsible for overseeing all programs. By directly supervising senior program managers and clinical site managers, she will help build communication, cohesion and efficiency across all our services. Her expert leadership of programs will allow my efforts to be even more focused on the financial management and fundraising that is needed to keep the agency strong.

Suzanne Smith

“I first connected with Tapestry when my family moved to this area from England. I was ready to go back to work after having my baby, and I learned about something called The Family Planning Council of Western Massachusetts. I was instantly interested, because their mission was exactly my field of work. One of my earliest jobs had been with a reproductive health clinic in San Francisco. Later when living in London, I oversaw HIV/AIDS services and also led an HIV/AIDS research project that was published in the British Medical Journal. So when I returned to the States, I was eager to apply to this organization doing cutting-edge work in my fields. Right around that time they changed their name to Tapestry Health.

This is my second time around at Tapestry, and it’s an exciting time to be back. There is a lot of opportunity to improve the quality of our services and to think creatively about the organization’s future. I’m looking forward to reconnecting with some of our wonderful community partners, and to learning more about community needs. Tapestry really is an organization that listens. We are always talking to people in the community to find out about emerging health needs. Then we try to figure out how we can best address them – whether that means shifting how we deliver a service, or launching a new program.

Most of all, I’m happy to be here because our staff. It really all comes down to them. I have so much respect for their dedication to this work. They do an amazing job of delivering high quality services in many different settings and of making clients their priority. Their work is not always easy; I consider it my job to invest in them and to support them. We would not be able to provide such caring, quality services without their commitment.”

Is Growing a Nonprofit an Either-Or Proposition?

I recently rewatched Dan Pallotta’s fascinating TEDTalk about how our society’s values around charitable giving may actually inhibit the capacity of nonprofits to achieve great things, like eradicating homelessness or curing breast cancer. He singles out the requirement to “keep overhead low” as a major problem that prevents service organizations from scaling their work in a way that could truly transform society.

Even though my daily work at the helm of a service organization keeps me keenly aware of the importance of organizational infrastructure, I found myself thinking hard about Palotta’s message. Is he pitting the financing of overhead against the support of programs that directly serve people with profound needs? Thinking as a donor, I always want to make sure that my dollars help meet those needs. I want them funding the hard working, on-the-ground staffers.

But I also know that this is not an either-or situation. As part of the leadership team at Tapestry, I am keenly aware that our programs, and the clients they serve, will benefit from enormously as we create more robust and effective overhead systems to support them. How we implement our technology, handle our finances, tune our marketing, reach out to the community, and plan for the future are crucial “overhead” activities that can dramatically impact the reach and effectiveness of our programs. We are determined to do them right.

And I think this is an important point from Dan Pallotta’s talk: infrastructure that is well-sustained and well-implemented can take service delivery to another level that has a dramatically positive impact on the community. I know I’ll be thinking about these ideas as I make my yearly gifts to organizations around the Valley.

What do you think of Dan Pallotta’s talk? What is your vision of dramatically positive changes that Tapestry 2.0 could make in our community?

What About Obamacare?

“Now that we have Obamacare, do we still need places like Tapestry Health?” This is a common question I hear nowadays.

From its beginning Tapestry has fought for desperately needed access to care—first for women profoundly in need of family planning services, and then for the many marginalized and low-income communities we serve today. And over the years we have seen progress. 2006 marked a big victory for greater access when Massachusetts led the way toward universal coverage. More recently President Obama built the national Affordable Care Act based on the Massachusetts model, bringing health insurance within reach for millions.

So hasn’t the access gap been closed? Who is left for Tapestry to serve? If people have insurance, can’t they just go to their regular doctor? Why do they need us?

Questions like this were raised at this month’s National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association’s regional meeting in Indiana, which I attended with Tapestry managers. We encouraged caregivers from other programs in other states, which are just getting used to the ACA, to look to Massachusetts to understand how their work will continue to be critically important. Because the reality is that, despite eight years of greater access, community-based healthcare is still a crucial element in our state’s safety net.

Consider who Tapestry serves. Of our 6,800 annual reproductive health patients, 95% report incomes at or near the poverty level. For these clients the challenges of daily life are staggering. The time, financial and logistical costs of a traditional doctor’s appointment are prohibitive. Social barriers rooted in language, culture and the need for trauma-informed care can also be impediments. Moreover, while many have been insured for years under Mass Health, Western MA residents struggle even to find doctors in the face of a provider shortage that the Springfield Republican deems a “medical emergency.” 

Tapestry Health is vital in filling these gaps. With same or next-day appointments, the ability to accept walk-ins, sliding-scale services, and offices throughout the area, Tapestry provides trauma-informed, culturally-sensitive care locally and immediately.  

So, do we still need places like Tapestry? Yes. Even with Obamacare, Tapestry’s work remains essential to the health of our region. A better question is, “How can Tapestry 2.0 leverage new access to coverage to serve our community in a more comprehensive way?”  It is this question that we will strive to answer in the months ahead.   

Confronting the Opioid Crisis

Photo credit: Dave Roback, The Republican

I want to take a moment to share with you about an important event that happened last week. At First Churches in Northampton, Tapestry Health helped to host a candlelight vigil for those who have lost loved ones to heroin overdose. Local victims’ names were read aloud, and many people shared stories of how these losses have devastated families and our community.

By bringing forward and honoring the memories of victims, the vigil highlighted the real human cost of our region’s serious opioid crisis. Tapestry is at the forefront of the effort to confront this crisis and turn it around.

Some of you who know us primarily for our reproductive health and family planning services may be surprised to learn that Tapestry has been doing critical work to reduce the impact of substance use since 1995 when we opened our first needle exchange in Northampton. Our needle exchange staff have now trained over 3,000 people on how to recognize an overdose and intervene using Narcan to prevent an overdose death.

Over 350 people in our area have reported back to us that Narcan was used to reverse an overdose. That’s 350 people given a chance to live another day and seek treatment.

Our trainings also help shift attitudes toward heroin addiction, fostering non-judgmental approaches to caring for those affected. Head trainer and needle exchange Director Liz Whynott (pictured above) was interviewed at the vigil. As she explained, “We treat drug users with respect and work to respond to what they need instead of trying to get them to follow our agenda”.

This client-centered approach is a common thread through all of Tapestry’s services. As our leadership team works to strengthen operations and make programs more efficient, we remain dedicated to meeting people where they are, and to treating everyone as worthy of care.

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You can read MassLive’s coverage of the vigil here and a recent interview with Liz Whynott about Tapestry's Needle Exchange here.

If you or someone you know is concerned about opioid overdose, call the Tapestry Health Needle Exchange for help and information. 

Northampton: (413) 586-0310 

Holyoke:  (413) 315-3732 ext. 1

Meet New Board Member Dorian Gregory

A top priority for Tapestry’s Board of Directors is strengthening its financial know-how, and we’ve been fortunate to gain some new board members who are experts in this area. Dorian Gregory, CPA, joined the board in April, and we’re honored to have her working with us. A former senior manager with PricewaterhouseCoopers, LLP, Dorian brings almost 20 years of expertise in finance and governance, as well as real passion for Tapestry’s mission. She is now our region’s Loan Outreach Officer for The Cooperative Fund of New England. Some of you may also know her as the Board president at River Valley Market Co-op. Welcome, Dorian!

Dorian Gregory, CPA


“I’ve been a supporter of Tapestry Health since I moved to the Valley in 1989. Tapestry’s work really matters: it saves lives and, politically, it provides a voice for people who don’t usually get a say.

So often in our world, the people who have the most need also have the least power. Access to good health care really should be treated as a basic human right, but until that happens, we need organizations like Tapestry. Tapestry brings life-saving healthcare to people who need it the most, and who can access it the least.

As a CPA, I try to use my professional skills to support organizations that I believe in, so when the Tapestry Board asked me to contribute my financial expertise, I said yes. It’s been a great experience. We have an excellent team that is committed to making the best possible decisions. The organization has such a great mission, and now we have a chance to keep it moving forward, help it adapt to a changing healthcare environment, and see it thrive. Who wouldn’t want to be part of that?”

In one sentence or less, what is the mission of Tapestry Health?

Since joining Tapestry in June, I've been asking everyone I meet this question. It's fascinating to hear all the different answers, because every one of them is right.

Yes, Tapestry is high-quality, confidential women’s reproductive health services. It’s also being a regional leader in HIV/AIDS awareness and testing. As well, Tapestry stands for harm-reduction and overdose prevention for at-risk populations, trauma-informed care for victims of domestic violence, peer-to-peer education for men, life-saving screenings for breast and cervical cancer, and access to nutritious food for struggling families.

For four decades Tapestry has strived to meet every public health challenge that has come its way, so that today there is a full roster of programs and services addressing very critical community health needs throughout Western Mass. What ties all these programs together? When I think of Tapestry Health, I think: fearless, no challenge too great, working on the front lines, and going where we are most needed.

For 40 years Tapestry has been stepping up for our community. I’m excited today to share this blog with you, so that our community can better understand what makes Tapestry tick and how to get involved. It’s through the community coming together that we can keep this intrepid, compassionate organization functioning and healthy for another 40 years (at least!).

As I write this, Tapestry’s new leadership team, including additions to the Board of Directors and key hires to senior staff, is taking shape. With our community and financial partners, we are developing a road map for moving the organization fully into the 21st century. So I also look forward to using this space to introduce you to those new faces and to keep you informed of our progress.

In the meantime, something to think about: what does Tapestry Health mean to you?