Running from (To) Greatness: The Birth of Grapevine Health - A Health Activist’s Journey Creating a Community and Health Outreach Organization

The COVID-19 pandemic has taught the world many things, but one of the most crucial is the need to communicate tailored health information through trusted messengers effectively. The Birth of Grapevine Health chronicles the experiences of one physician, Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick, a CDC-trained medical epidemiologist on a mission to deliver trusted health information to the Black community through Grapevine Health, a community and health outreach organization she started with the aim to improve patient engagement and health literacy in underserved communities through the digital delivery of tailored health messages.

Fitzpatrick reveals why she began building an organization that, in 2020, appeared tailored for the COVID-19 pandemic long before that crisis unfolded across the globe. Frustrated by the lack of progress in addressing health inequity, Dr. Lisa moved into an under-resourced community to become proximal enough to better understand health inequity and the structural and policy changes needed to address it.

She weaves her professional experiences with storytelling and lessons learned into a call to action for healthcare leaders, decisionmakers, and funders to move beyond data collection and shift toward action to focus on health prevention, move our health support further upstream and, ultimately, improve health outcomes for underserved communities.

The Birth of Grapevine Health is part memoir, part health equity playbook, and offers a roadmap to actions needed to achieve health equity. At a time when health equity conversations seem ubiquitous, what sets The Birth of Grapevine Health apart is its embrace and integration of community voice. This book delivers deep insights and, at times, uncomfortable advice through the eyes of Black and brown patients and their communities about what it will take to achieve health equity.

Lisa Fitzpatrick, MD, MPH, MPA is a senior health care leader, with over 20 years of health care management, leadership, clinical and research experience with renown organizations like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, US Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services, including Medicaid and the Milken Institute George Washington University School of Public Health. She is a member of the Aspen Institute Global Leadership Network and an Aspen Institute Health Innovator. Dr. Fitzpatrick has a proven track record in global health leadership, designing and conducting prevention and clinical research and establishing multi-disciplinary coalitions to influence organizational change. She is an influencer among clinicians and public health leaders. Dr. Fitzpatrick has keen insights both personally and professionally into low-income and African American populations and over her career has conducted countless formative interviews, including focus groups, with low-income populations to better understand barriers and challenges to engagement in health care and preventive health behaviors. She founded an outpatient clinical center and a wellness non-profit to help address unmet needs of the low-income population in Washington, DC. She is a skilled negotiator and uses her strategic and analytical decision-making expertise to influence agency policies affecting at-risk minority populations. In 2015 Dr. Fitzpatrick became the Senior Medical Director for the Washington, DC Department of Health Care Finance, a health care agency with a ＄3.1 billion budget. In this executive role, she develops and influences all clinical policies for the Medicaid program. In this role she fosters cross-sectoral collaboration with the Departments of Health, Human Services, Behavioral Health and Emergency Services.

Prior to her Medicaid role, Dr. Fitzpatrick was a Commander in the US Public Health Service and served at the CDC for 10 years where she held a variety of leadership roles including, senior medical epidemiologist, lead researcher and mentor for young, minority investigators. Throughout her career, Dr. Fitzpatrick has received many awards and honors, most recently and notably, the American Hospital Association Grassroots Champion award, the DC Health Care Finance Director’s Award for Excellence in Service, the US Public Health Service Commendation Medal and has been recognized by Ebony magazine as a ＂Future Leader of the 21st Century＂. She is a member of the American Public Health Association and serves on the board of the Infectious Disease Society of America HIV Medicine Association and the Public Health Committee Advisory Group. Dr. Fitzpatrick holds Doctor of Medicine from the University of Missouri, a Master in Public Health from the University of California-Berkeley and a Master in Public Administration from the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government.