After a decade of working to improve health care in the Tri-Cities, Brooke DuBois will retire as executive director of the Benton-Franklin Community Health Alliance on Jan. 31.
"I have been at it a decade and I am not getting any younger, and I decided it was time to turn it over to a younger person so I can enjoy the beginning of my golden years," DuBois said.
Dr. Kate Perry, an internal medicine specialist, will take over as executive director when DuBois steps down.
"I am very happy to turn it over to Kate," DuBois said. "She will do a terrific job. Sometimes when you've been doing something for a decade and you have fresh blood, a new perspective and new ideas, that can be good for an organization."
The Community Health Alliance identifies needs in the health care community and works with necessary agencies and people to find solutions to problems or gaps. Its current priorities include access to health care, domestic violence, food and fitness, work force development, mental health, oral health and tobacco use.
Members of the alliance's board of directors include Benton and Franklin counties' Public Health Officer Dr. Larry Jecha, Group Health Cooperative's administrator Bob Burden, and CEOs of Kennewick General Hospital, Kadlec Health System and Lourdes Health Network.
During DuBois' tenure with the Community Health Alliance, she has worked avidly to address a nursing shortage in the community, as well as on mental health issues.
From the time she took over the nonprofit in 2000 to 2006, the number of nursing graduates in the Tri-Cities rose from 27 a year to about 90 a year, at least in part because the alliance surveyed the community and convinced Columbia Basin College and Washington State University Tri-Cities that the community needed more nurses.
DuBois also was instrumental in the creation of a program called Access to Care that helped connect low-income people without insurance to health care providers, low-cost drug programs and other tools to help them get health care. The program closed its doors in 2008 because it lacked funding.
She said she'll remain active with the alliance as a volunteer, working primarily on mental health issues in the community.
Perry has been a doctor in Richland since 1996 and has been involved with the alliance's food and fitness coalition for more than two years.
As executive director, she'll lead the efforts to begin a community fitness challenge involving various sectors of the community.
She also is president of the Women Helping Women Fund Tri-Cities Board of Directors.
Perry said she long has had an interest in chronic disease prevention and public health and looks forward to making strides in both as head of the alliance.
"I am very excited about this opportunity to contribute to the health of our community," she said.
