December 19, 2007

Community Leadership Award Ambassador Profile - Stacie Cokinos
San Jose Clinic Awarded $10K from St. Luke’s Episcopal Health Charities

As Executive Director of San Jose Clinic, Cokinos plays an integral role in making specialty healthcare available to uninsured Texans.  San Jose Clinic is the oldest charity clinic in the nation still operating, and is one of the five largest charity clinics in the country.  Cokinos has pushed to expand San Jose to serve even more people, with plans including a new facility in Midtown.  Her efforts even reached hurricane evacuees in 2005, when many received services at San Jose, or benefited from her plan to provide free care for one year to anyone displaced by hurricanes.

In 2005, the St. Luke’s Episcopal Health Charities Community Leadership Award was established to recognize community health leaders from non-profit organizations who have not been fully recognized for charitable work. Each recipient demonstrates outstanding leadership and collaboration in advancing community health for the underserved.

For the first time, five additional grant recipients have been selected this year as “Ambassadors” and received $10,000 for the non-profit agency of their choice, bringing the total award amount to $100,000.

“This year we faced the insurmountable task of choosing one winner among many exceptional nominees,” said The Rt. Rev. Dena A. Harrison, Bishop Suffragan for the Episcopal Diocese of Texas and board chair for St. Luke’s Episcopal Health Charities.  “In order to better serve the needs of the community, we decided to award five more community leaders as Ambassadors because of their personal accomplishments and extraordinary community health leadership.”

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St. Luke's Episcopal Health Charities, the largest Houston charity devoted solely to healthcare, was created in 1997 as a separate component of St. Luke’s Episcopal Health System. St. Luke's Episcopal Health Charities melds together the healing ministry of the Episcopal Diocese of Texas and the healing mission of St. Luke’s Episcopal Health System to promote community health across the Episcopal Diocese. Since its inception, it has awarded more than 1200 grants totaling more than $70 million to nonprofit service organizations in the Houston area and 32 Texas counties, targeting disease prevention and health promotion among the underserved.