For someone who has spent her entire career assisting the underserved health population, Carla Gibson credits her former employers for getting her to where she is now.
Her time at Swope Health paved the way for her current position at REACH Healthcare Foundation, where she has worked since 2006 and served as vice president of programs since 2021.
Relocating and reconnecting
Gibson left her hometown Omaha, NE, and relocated to the Kansas City area in the 90s. It didn’t quite feel like home until she started working at Swope Health in 1998. This was her second tenure at a Federally Qualified Health Center, which reconnected her to the Black community.
“The job at Swope Health came at the perfect time,” Gibson said. “I was able to get back into working in my community, so it felt like I had come back home. After being on the prevention side in Omaha, I was on the care side of HIV and AIDS for a change.”
At that time, the HIV/AIDS epidemic was near its peak. Gibson was a Ryan White Case Manager, which was a federally funded HIV/AIDS program named after 13-year-old Ryan White who famously contracted the disease through a blood transfusion. Ryan White Case Managers were placed in key locations to reach the vulnerable populations, and Gibson was the only one at Swope Health, managing a caseload of approximately 60.
“I coordinated the care of a high acuity caseload and primarily served black homeless men who had substance abuse or mental health issues. It was my responsibility to coordinate their care, which took into account the social determinants of health,” she said.
Back to her roots
Gibson’s passion around HIV/AIDS led her to explore her next opportunity. In 1999, she returned to the prevention side of care at KC Care Health Center (then known as the Kansas City Free Health Clinic). Thanks to the knowledge earned at Swope Health, Gibson was able to make a big impact during her six-year tenure.
“My time at Swope Health gave me a 360-degree view of what HIV and AIDS work entailed in care and prevention,” Gibson said.
At KC Care, Gibson launched their prevention department as the prevention coordinator and quickly advanced to prevention manager. Like at Swope Health, she continued to leave a lasting impact on Black youth and the Black community.
“The prevention department included counseling, testing, and disease elimination, such as syphilis elimination projects and needle exchanges,” she said. “We were the first to implement same-day rapid HIV tests, which was groundbreaking back then. I moved into overseeing and developing the prevention programs for the clinic, and I’m proud of that.”
Path to philanthropy
Gibson shifted gears in 2006. On a whim, she applied to become a program officer at REACH Healthcare Foundation and was hired. Soon, she became a senior program leader and assisted a larger underserved health population through funds and grants.
“When I came over to the Foundation, I asked myself, ‘How I can continue to fight for others?’” she said. “Addressing health disparities and issues that are impacting the Black community is what I came up with – helping those in marginalized, poor, underserved communities.”
In 2021, Gibson transitioned into the Vice President of Programs role. She’s now responsible for all the grantmaking initiatives and anything programmatic on the foundation side. All these years later, Gibson still feels that her tenure at Swope Health is the reason she’s able to do what she does today.
“My experience at Swope Health helped me tremendously. It gave me a perspective on what it’s like to be on the front lines. I’m not someone working in a foundation who has never had boots-on-the-ground experience,” Gibson said. “I know what it takes to run health programs and what these clinics deal with. I wrote and applied for grants, so it gave me a solid foundation to move into philanthropy.”
