Riverside Day of Giving Results in Overwhelming Support

To celebrate the anniversary of Riverside’s founding in December 1915, Riverside invited our community of patients, families, team members and champions to participate in a 24-hour online Day of Giving. The four projects to be funded were proposed by team members across our health system as innovations that would remove barriers to care and would elevate the standard of care that our mission inspires. All four projects were fully funded in just one short day.

The four projects:

• Preventive eye care for children is essential to ensure academic and social success. Prescription lenses, medications, patches and other vision aids are vital corrections to eye problems and are often unaffordable. Funds raised through Day of Giving supported uninsured or underinsured families in meeting these costs, providing children with a bright future at little or no cost to the family.

• Riverside’s Food as Medicine program provides patients in resource-scarce communities with tools for a healthier lifestyle to reduce blood pressure and body mass index. The program provides group health coaching and exercise classes as well as healthy food kits, cooking supplies and at-home blood pressure monitors with readings that load to MyChart for daily monitoring and provider intervention when needed. Food as Medicine is currently implemented at the Charlie W. and Golden Bethune Hill Community Health Clinic in Newport News and served 40 patients in the last quarter of 2022. Donated funds are creating additional food kits and will help Riverside to expand the program into other under-resourced communities.