Nosotros somos de Rubio, de Cuauhtémocihuahua.

Evelyn tenía seis años cuando me decía que le dolía la cabeza y la llevamos con un pediatra y le encontraron un meduloblastoma.

Me dijeron que la tenían que operar y que no era muy probable que viviera.

Que más bien yo esperara lo peor Hasta que un día me dijeron que Evelyn se estaba recuperando, no sabían ellos ni cómo.

No iba a caminar, caminó.

No iba a hablar, habló, no iba a comer, empezó a ver.

Los doctores no lo podían creer.

Cuando me iban a hacer todas esas pruebas, se quedaron sorprendidos de mí.

Me hacían fiestas, ahí mismo y todo porque yo era la única que había sobrevivido.

is the central point of access for any patient into the healthcare system.

And the healthcare system in this country is challenging.

It's very confusing.

There's a lot of different aspects.

There are nuances.

And when English is not your first language, it becomes even more challenging And so the benefit of primary care is to really have that primary care home to help navigate those patients through the healthcare system and get them the preventive care and chronic care services that they need.

Staying out of the emergency department, staying out of the hospital, those are goals that everyone should have.

And they're much better managed if you have that connection to a primary care provider, to someone that you know you can go to with questions, with the needs that you have coming up.

(Music) Llegamos en el 2000 y no crea cuando uno viene no hay quien le ayude.

No pues ahí hazle como puedas.

Yo en México tenía carro y todo, pero aquí no.

No conocía las señales, no conocía el dinero americano, no, no lo conocía.

Y bueno, pues a buscarle no contaban con dos valentonas.

Y así tratando de buscar trabajo luego luego para no ser carga para nadie.

Y muy bien me fue gracias a dios Porque lo mío es la cocina.

Y bueno, pues yo conseguí trabajo en un puesto de de tacos.

de tacos.

La comunidad latina se mezcla casi 25% de la The Latino community makes up almost 25% of the state's population here in Colorado, but there's a lot of unmet needs still in the community.

What we see here at TEPEYAC, there are a lot of patients who are experiencing a number of different social determinants of health, numbers of barriers to healthcare.

Those can include language, financial, transportation, housing.

Even just living in a country where you don't speak the language can be enough to provide trauma, or being someone who's struggling to pain rent, having issues accessing your medications.

It's not easy.

(Music) 32 years ago, I was a member of the parish council at Our Lady Guadalupe Church in North Denver.

And the first meeting I attended the pastor of the church said one of the most pressing issues facing not just the church community, but the broader community is access to basic healthcare and dental care and mental healthcare.

There was always a sense of what can we do to meet the needs of the community.

(Music) This church doesn't have the resources, but we have a little house across the street.

We could somehow renovate it and open the clinic.

(Music) So when we started working on the renovation of this little house in North Denver, it was all community volunteers.

And that first weekend we had over 100 people show up with their tools.

(Music) So when we say our community or our health center was built by the community for the community, we mean that literally.

(Music) So when we first opened our doors, though, we had all medical volunteers, medical doctors, nurses, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, donated medical equipment and medical supplies.

And eventually, we started getting support from the local foundations.

(Music) My wife and I went to the Denver Art Museum and there was an exhibit on Latin American art.

Part of that exhibit was told the story of our Lady Guadalupe and the healing miracle that occurred at the Hill at Tepeyac.

And I turned to my wife and I said, I think we have a name for our clinic.

What could be better than a place of healing?

(Music) This mural that was done by David Soto Garcia kind of tells the story of the commun coming together the person in the purple jacket, I think it's supposed to be me planning for our future.

(upbeat music) Yo desde el primer día que fui ahí, yo me sentí muy afortunada, muy bien tratada, que ¿qué tiene que haya estado chiquita y todo?

No no no eso no importaba Lo que importaba era la atención que le daban Yo fui a pedir el servicio médico de Evelyn Y no, me dijeron que el mío y el de mi esposo.

Y mi esposo no quería Él me dijo que él cuando se enfermara se iba a ir a México y él fue el primero que usó el servicio médico porque se cayó en la bicicleta en unas vías y se pegó.

(Music) The demand for our services was gonna be so great that we were gonna have to start planning for a much larger facility to meet the needs of our community.

So this was our second location and now we're at our new location.

And so this is part of that story.

(Music) When we moved here, we thought we had moved into a palace.

It was just so much larger than what we had experienced.

We thought this was gonna be our permanent home.

Has 10 exam rooms.

We also have behavioral health and dental screenings at this facility.

(Music) The artist who painted this beautiful mural is a gentleman by the name of Daniel Luna.

Before he started painting this, he just sat in our patient waiting area and just observed people coming and going, families, children, adults.

It also speaks to the fact that we have our garden next door and just how important it is to have a healthy community with fresh food, providing a whole natural network of support.

So this mural really exemplifies Tepeyac and what we mean in our place in our community.

(Music) Son personas muy profesionales, eso sí lo tengo muy claro y muy humanitarias y le dan seguimiento a mis enfermedades y todo y muy al pendiente y ya le toca esto y ya le toca al otro y para mí es una gran clínica.

Martha fue mi paciente Martha was my patient first and she's been a long time patient and I followed her for her primary care.

And she asked if her daughter could come back to the clinic.

She had used to be a patient at the clinic.

And she came in for that appointment and she was in a lot of pain.

And she was very uncomfortable and based on my exam, I had significant concerns that there was something very serious going on.

And so I sent her directly to the emergency room.

Me hicieron una sonografía aquí en el estómago y ya fué cuando me dijo el doctor que traía un tumor canceroso en el estómago.

Que todo eso tenía cáncer que tenían que retirar los ovarios y la matriz.

Mi ilusión era con el tiempo, pues ser mamá, pero pues al ver la gravedad y todo, tomé la decisión que mejor, todo saliera ya de una vez y aunque mucho lloré y todo, pero tomé esa desición.

Tuvo que ir con el psicólogo y todo, pero fue mejor así.

La especialista del Tepeyac en momentos de depresión me aconsejó, me dijo que pues que yo pensara bien que yo podía lograr ser mamá de otro modo.

estoy muy agradecida con todos ellos.

Ya pasé las químios, ya pasé la radiación y gracias a Dios, ya pasé la operación, la libré y ya gracias a Dios estoy aquí otra vez.

As a medical provider, sometimes you feel isolated that you have to carry this burden with a patient by yourself.

And having to deliver this news and having to help them navigate the healthcare system.

And I think being able to provide compassionate care and being able to empathize is something that I value in myself as a provider.

And it's something that I strive to give every single patient every day and give them the space to talk about what they need.

Because I might come into the room with an agenda of I wanna talk about your hypertension and your depression.

But my patient might be telling me that their family member passed away yesterday.

And that completely shifts the focus on what's important in that moment.

Looking at not just the physical health side, but also the behavioral or mental health side.

And also your social needs, whether it might be about housing or food or transportation or childcare.

These are things now that the healthcare system, especially organizations like Tepeyac, can understand as they care for patients.

And look at the whole picture of what the person needs, where their lives are at that moment in time, and how different resources can help them be healthy.

(Music) It's unfortunate, but community health centers do not have as consistent a funding stream as they could have.

So this sort of waves the ups and downs that they experience as a community health center in terms of funding is something that we look to partner with them to see what is possible and how can we make community health centers more sustainable.

A big turning point for the organization was in 2015 when the clinic became a federally qualified health center.

And that moved the organization from a primarily volunteer run, volunteer driven organization to now having some federal funding that could support hiring of staff and expansion of services.

(Music) We want it to be a little differ the colors, the feel, to not be like a traditional health center, to have it be colorful and warm and welcoming.

And welcoming not just to the Latino community, but welcoming to all individuals.

I remember hospitals as a child being teal walls, lime green.

And the last thing I want is for their blood pressure to go up and their anxiety to increase, the moment they walk through our doors.

So everybody dresses professional, everybody dresses nice, but there's no reason to have those symbols of authority healthcare on each person.

(Music) What we try to do is make the physical space as comfortable as possible.

But also we want the interactions with our medical staff and our patient, making sure that when someone walks in our front door that they feel welcome, they feel comfortable, they feel like this is a safe place to have their needs met.

(Music) We have that integrated care services for dental, behavioral health, case management, and a registered dietitian and registered nurse.

So we can do certified diabetes education counseling, we can do insulin teaching, we can help understand medication regimens.

And so all of that happens within the space of this medical's pod.

In our previous location, we had no pharmacy.

Our providers would write the prescription, but there was no guarantee that the patient would be able to fill their prescription.

In many cases, they weren't able to afford the cost.

So when we were planning for this building, we understood that that was just a really important piece of the puzzle.

Initially, lots of needs in this neighborhood identify how close the nearest pharmacy is.

So it's two miles, which doesn't seem like much.

But for those who have a transportation barrier, it's a long, long walk.

I had a pregnant woman who had asthma, and she was not using her inhaler because it cost $500 a month.

She said she didn't leave the house, she didn't go on walks, because she did not want to trigger an asthma attack while she was pregnant.

I've worked for 340B pharmacies before.

And here I was given the opportunity to build a place that didn't sacrifice quality, yet at the same time made it affordable for anybody who walks through the door.

So the goal over there was to get about 60% of the patients of the clinics to actually use the pharmacy.

Funding through Colorado Access funded the initial aspect of our pharmacy.

It funded the space, the equipment, and then basically the initial maybe month to three months of staff to make sure that we can get this right.

(Music) El diabetes, yo tenía muchos problemas con la azúcar, no me la podían controlar, no sé por qué motivos me mandaron el precio de la janubia, que eran $1,700 dólares, y me dijo la doctora, no, no, no, no, no, me lo redujeron a $5 Es lo que me cuesta el medicamento.

It feels really great to be able to tell patients, hey, you don't have to now go to another place to get your medications.

You can go right here to the pharmacy.

(Music) All the time to our patients coming from South America or Central America as well.

They have medications that are similar, are close.

Oftentimes it is the same ingredients, but the names of medications are very different.

But what I can do here is have the time and the support of the providers.

We can convert to something that's going to do the same thing for that patient, allow them to maintain their healthcare, or oftentimes do better.

Incluso el laboratorio, ¿cuánto le cobran a uno?

Muy poquito.

A mí mucha gente ni me cree.

This clinic is the combination of utilizing resources that existed, grant funding, to grow and to be able to provide those same services to more patients.

State and federal officials are bragging about Colorado's leadership in healthcare.

Today, Health and Human Services Secretary, Xavier Becerra, joined Governor Polis at Denver's Tepeyac Community Health Center.

Tepeac started in a home, but has grown into a clinic that offers affordable care.

The expansion of insurance through Obamacare has helped to provide even more care, which the secretary says is also a boost of confidence.

Tepeyac becomes not just a model, but an example of what we could do if we do care about the people we live around.

There might not be healthcare for many of the kids that go to school in this area.

There might not be the health services that an adult needs and can't afford because they don't have their own health insurance.

Tepeyac means dignity because you walk into a place like this and you see that you're going to be treated as if you were rich, because you're getting access to great facilities.

There's a need for us to give people a sense of pride in what they do.

We need them to have that sense, even if they don't make a lot of money.

Tepeyac does that.

It tells them, we're going to treat you with respect and you're going to get good healthcare.

(Music) When people let us know that they are uninsured, our first step is to introduce them to the sliding-fee discount for lower co-pays based off people's incomes and family sizes.

In addition to that, we provide on-site support for patients to apply for Medicaid and for insurance through the Omni Salud program, which is a program that is funded through the state for patients that qualify for lower price private insurance.

And we also have a partnership with a local program that helps us distribute food every Friday to patients that qualify for it.

(Music) Tonight, we celebrate Tepeyac's founding and the transformative impact we've made on tens of thousands of patients and their families over multiple generations.

We look forward as a new generation of leadership stands ready to take the lead as we look ahead to the next 30 years of service to our community.

Thank you all for the incredible commitment that has made Tepeyac what it is today.

(Applause) (Music) In the fall, we have our annual In the fall, we have our annual gala.

We invite donors, partners, community members to come, to donate, to have fun, to listen to music, there's a silent auction.

We have artwork, we have lots of different things, we have a paddle raise.

(Music) When we first started 30 years ago, it was the fiesta on the plaza, not only to raise much needed funding for our organization, but also to continue to spread the word about who we are and the services that we offer to the community so that more people learn about our mission and the work that we do.

In the spring, we have tortillas for Tepeyac, which is a tortilla rolling contest.

And we have local celebrities that come in and they test their skills on rolling the most perfect tortilla.

And then the winner is the tortilla titan, and they get a rolling pin that is hand painted by Daniel Luna.

(Music) I am the 2024 champion, actually the tortilla titan is my title.

This is really an honor to have won, I'm very proud of it.

I was very competitive going into it.

So it's an honor and it's so fun to have this to show.

And Daniel Luna's just beautiful artistry that is all over Tepeyac.

A piece of it being here is something that's meaningful to us.

(Music) We need to support more of the community health centers because not everyone needs to go to a hospital.

And not every doctor can have their own practice in the community.

But a community health center can bring everyone to the same place for good care.

That commitment, that connection that they have, and the way that they've nurtured relationships throughout the communities that they serve.

For all of their time, their 30 years, is not something that is typical in the healthcare system, unfortunately.

(Music) This last scene in the mural is really a scene of hope.

We have the young child just looking forward, looking up to the future.

And I think that's really where we're at today, health and wellness for our community.

(Music)