2022 Partner and Alumni Gathering

Thank you for joining Arcora Foundation’s hybrid Partner and Alumni Gathering! Below are the event materials and other related resources.

Year in Review

Vanetta Abdellatif—president and CEO—shared highlights from Arcora’s partner-driven work. Highlights include:

Community listening grants.
Seattle Children’s Odessa Brown Clinic.
Capital clinic grants.
Guest voices blog series.
Delta Dental of Washington’s Dental Pathways program.
2022 legislative wins.
Program highlights.

Thank you to our 2022 guest speaker, Dr. Anthony LT Chen. Dr. Chen is the director of health of Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department. As the chief health strategist for Pierce County, he promotes a policy, systems and environmental change approach to advance the Health Department’s vision of healthy people and healthy communities.

Learn more about Dr. Chen on the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department website.

The Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department is our managing partner for the Pierce County Local Impact Network (LIN). LINs bring together committed community partners who blend resources to improve oral health opportunities for people who need it most in their community.

2022 Oral Health Heroes

Arcora’s annual Oral Health Hero Awards recognize an organization, group, or individual who goes above and beyond to improve oral and overall health. The recipients* are often unsung heroes who work behind the scenes and out of the spotlight to help people reach their full health potential.

Teresita Batayola

President and former CEO
International Community Health Services (ICHS)

Under Batayola’s leadership, ICHS expanded from two sites to 11 in Seattle, Bellevue, and Shoreline. Six of the sites provide oral health services. Four of them are co-located and integrated with medical clinics: one is a school-based health center that also provides medical and behavioral health services; another is a mobile dental clinic. The mobile dental clinic brings dental services right to the doorsteps of high schools in the Puget Sound Region. During Batayola’s tenure, ICHS more than doubled its capacity to provide culturally and linguistically appropriate integrated dental services to immigrant and refugee communities.

Batayola is retiring from her role as CEO for ICHS at the end of this year, but she continues to serve. She is on President Biden’s Advisory Commission on Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders. 

Washington State Health Care Authority (HCA) Dental Team

Pixie Needham, Jayson Diaz, and Janice Tadeo

The HCA Dental Team—together and with state, private, and nonprofit partners—works to ensure people in Washington with Apple Health (Medicaid) insurance can access high quality, culturally appropriate care in their communities. The team also ensures that providers who accept Apple Health have a positive experience with the program.

The small but mighty team of Pixie Needham, Jayson Diaz—both registered dental hygienists—and Janice Tadeo have championed Arcora’s Access to Baby and Child Dentistry—or ABCD—Oral Health Connections, and DentistLink programs. They also facilitated Arcora’s data sharing agreement and legislative efforts. Their efforts have resulted in ABCD’s expansion, Oral Health Connections’ extension, and DentistLink’s public-private partnership status.