CCO Highlight: Umpqua Health Alliance

All our member CCOs are doing a stellar job meeting OHP members’ needs and keeping folks out of the hospitals! This week, we are highlighting Umpqua Health Alliance for their incredible work and investment in a local domestic violence advocacy center, Peace at Home.

The rate of domestic violence is already quite high in the United States, with someone experiencing violence at the hands of their partner every 20 minutes. Across the nation, we have seen spikes in domestic violence since social distancing measures began, giving us a clue at what it must be like to be quarantined in a violent situation with no reprieve, for a period of time that is completely undetermined. In fact, one of Peace at Home’s 22 community-integrated advocates shared that every day last week, they interviewed someone who had been strangled by an intimate partner.

Umpqua Health Alliance (UHA) knows and believes that safety during this pandemic also means safety from violence in the home, and relief is about more than just economic relief. So, UHA reached out to a local domestic violence advocacy center in Roseburg to see how they could help.

Peace at Home currently offers incredible emergency services to its community like a 24-hour crisis line, peer counseling, safety planning, assistance with securing food, door lock changes, and most importantly of all, emergency shelter.

Before this collaboration, Peace at Home was already running two shelters for those experiencing family violence, sexual assault, and human trafficking. These shelters were communal living, meaning that people in the shelters often shared quarters and had less independence.

Working together, Peace at Home and UHA concluded that the community most needed more shelter room or capacity to meet the increased demand for safe space during COVID-19. By using dollars from UHA’s COVID-19 Relief Fund, Peace at Home now had the ability to move currently sheltered Oregonians from the communal shelters into rooms of their own where they can self-isolate and be more independent.

This incredible investment by Umpqua Health Alliance has also freed up all the space in the communal shelter, which can now go to other Oregonians living in unsafe situations during this pandemic. UHA did not just make an investment and leave it there—instead, leadership at UHA has continued to reach out to Peace at Home to learn how they can better serve their members who are survivors of violence at home, as well as better understanding the help those Oregonians need.

Thank you, Umpqua Health Alliance, for your dedication to safety and relief during the COVID-19 pandemic, and your desire to help those experiencing violence at home. We look forward to sharing more about what UHA is doing with the remainder of their COVID-19 Relief Fund.