A Mission of Caring: Cheryl White Leads Centre Volunteers in Medicine as It Grows into a New, Larger Home

Centre Volunteers in Medicine is a free medical and dental clinic, providing access to primary and preventive medical and dental care for individuals living in Centre County and those working in Centre County who live in surrounding counties that do not have a free clinic or programs to meet their needs. 

As executive director of CVIM, Cheryl White is responsible for overseeing the clinic’s overall fiscal and operational management. As the public face and spokesperson for the organization, White focuses her time on community outreach and serves as the liaison between the Board of Directors and staff, both paid and volunteer. During the pandemic, CVIM and its volunteers have administered the lifesaving COVID-19 vaccine to the community. 

Although she was born in western Pennsylvania, White grew up in Buffalo, New York. She graduated from Penn State in 1980 with a bachelor’s degree in business administration and went on to earn an associate’s degree in nursing from Lock Haven University in 1996. As a registered nurse, she was a physician liaison at HealthSouth Nittany Valley, now Encompass Health, prior to her position at CVIM.

White is currently the board chair for the Free Clinic Association of Pennsylvania and serves on multiple National Association of Free and Charitable Clinics committees. She recently sat down with Town&Gown founder Mimi Barash Coppersmith via Zoom to discuss the clinic’s vaccination efforts, the purchase of the new CVIM building in State College, and the organization’s capital campaign to raise funds to continue its mission in the community.

Mimi: You are an amazing woman. You arrived at CVIM in 2010, and wow, you have done a remarkable job along the way, especially through the pandemic. Give us an idea of your strategy and leadership style in being the boss of a remarkable organization.

Cheryl: Well, thank you for those kind comments. I believe that my success at CVIM is because I surround myself with great people, and I get out of the way and let them do their work. I have an amazing staff and an amazing group of volunteers dedicated to the mission of caring for the uninsured in our community, and I owe my success to them.

Mimi: What was the biggest hurdle?

Cheryl: The biggest hurdle for me was going from for-profit healthcare and business to a nonprofit arena where every dollar must come from the community. We don’t have anything to sell at CVIM to make revenue come in the door. And that’s the really big difference between my previous career and this one.

Mimi: Which do you like better?

Cheryl: Nonprofit is much more challenging. It’s a harder job to do. But at the end of the day, I find it to be more rewarding.

Mimi: How do you feel when you go home every night?

Cheryl: The days here can be challenging. They’re never the same. Each day brings a different challenge. But at the end of the day, if I can remember that we help just one patient at CVIM, it’s a rewarding day. When I got here to CVIM, I had to learn that we couldn’t save everybody at once. And a wise man told me to focus on the patients we were helping rather than the ones that we couldn’t. So, one patient at a time.

Mimi: Do you get many love letters from your patients?

Cheryl: We do. We get many thank-yous on the way out the door, and tears. And often our patients become donors. When their situation in life changes and they are better off, they remember that we took care of them and they give back. And that’s really important, too. I think that speaks a lot about what we do here.

Mimi: How have you mobilized the number of volunteers that are truly dedicated to your operation?

Cheryl: I was fortunate when I got here that there was already an existing team of volunteers. Many of them had been with us since our beginning in 2003. They’re very dedicated, and they enjoy coming here to CVIM. They like the fact that we help care for people. They, in turn, tell their friends and that’s where we get most of our volunteers, from word of mouth.

Mimi: You give the appearance of being calm, cool and collected to take on challenges.

Cheryl: I’m not always calm, cool and collected. I think that comes with maturity over time. And I try to remind myself to just keep smiling.

Mimi: You’re not afraid to open doors. How did you get that skill?

Cheryl: My parents were often surrounded by friends, and I was taught at a young age to be respectful, to listen and try to be part of the conversation and contribute when I was asked. I think I’ve carried that over into my work. Being a good listener is something that really helps to open doors, because for the most part, people like to talk about themselves.

I like to think that my children are good at that also. When my boys were younger and we would be with a crowd, I would get compliments on how well behaved they were, how easy they were to talk to.

I guess we were just expected to act like adults most of the time. So, I learned how to converse and become a good listener.

Mimi: What did your parents do?

Cheryl: My dad was a Penn State grad; he was a civil engineer and worked for Westinghouse. My mom was a schoolteacher. She graduated from Clarion.

Mimi: So, you came from an educated household that passed along to you some good, solid common sense.

Cheryl: I knew from early on that I was expected to go to college. My grandmother on my mother’s side had six children, and all but one of them were college grads. They were all teachers. I just knew when I got out of high school that was the next step. It was expected of me. I’m thankful for that.

Mimi: Well, it’s done a lot for you, as it has for me. And you’re a Penn Stater. And you get to live in this wonderful community. How many people do you serve?

Cheryl: On average, CVIM serves about 1,000 patients a year across our multiple service areas.

Mimi: And how many volunteers do you have in a year?

Cheryl: About 200. And that’s not including our vaccine efforts. Those numbers are greater with the vaccine volunteers.

Mimi: Your latest challenge is paying for the new building. Bring us up to date.

Cheryl: We were fortunate to recently purchase the building located on Sandy Drive, where we’re going to hopefully renovate and relocate our clinic. It will almost double our space. It will allow for additional medical exam rooms and two extra dental operatories. We hope that by improving our space, we will be able to recruit more volunteers, volunteer providers, doctors and dentists to see our patients. It’ll also give us the flexibility to continue to meet the community’s changing needs so that as those needs change, CVIM can adapt within our new space to try to meet those needs.

A good example of that is our women’s health program. When Tapestry left the area back in 2012, we developed a women’s health program to take over that need. The community has a strong need for behavioral healthcare. And we started that program with a pilot grant from Highmark back in 2016 to integrate behavioral health into primary care. And so, we’re hopeful that our new facility will give us that flexibility to continue to meet whatever those needs might be.

Mimi: How many doctors and dentists give up their time to make this clinic work?

Cheryl: We have 42 medical providers who volunteer. Currently, we only have a handful of dentists, maybe six or seven.

Mimi: How do you get more?

Cheryl: We need dentists. We have some United Way funding to help pay for a staff dentist. The dentist we recently had on staff just moved to North Carolina, so we’re actively hiring a part-time dentist. Dentists are hard to come by.

Mimi: How many dental patients do you serve?

Cheryl: Last fiscal year, we had 318 patients who came for 1,130 visits. But that was also during the pandemic, so we weren’t doing dental during part of that time. That number is usually around 600. We always have a dental waiting list, people waiting for a first-time visit. That’s usually around 400 to 500 people. That’s why we need to hire a dentist.

Mimi: Do you have any nurses?

Cheryl: We do. There are 20 paid staff at CVIM. That’s about 14½ full-time equivalents. So, we have a staff member in every area of the clinic who oversee the providers and the volunteers for continuity of care. I have two staff nurses; they’re there just a little over 40 hours. So, they’re both part-time, and I have a dental assistant who works with the dental providers. Of course, I have an administrative staff. So, the volunteer in medicine model, using the volunteers in the clinic to provide the care that we do, allows us to take the dollars that [are donated], and multiply them. For every dollar donated, we provide $3 worth of care to the community.

Mimi: Wow. So, you’re living on thin ice all the time. Every time you improve, you have to worry about money.

Cheryl: As I said earlier, we don’t have anything to sell here at CVIM except our reputation. And so, we rely on the community for support.

Mimi: Let’s talk a little bit about that upcoming capital campaign.

Cheryl: We will be announcing the public face soon. We are raising money for the capital purchase, the renovation of the building. We’re also hoping to raise funds to endow the clinic moving forward. That’s really important for nonprofits to have that endowment piece to live off of moving forward to get us through the harder times and allow us the flexibility to expand in good years.

Mimi: Give a little information on what people should do now if they are ready to pull out their checking accounts and be generous in the New Year.

Cheryl: They can reach out by emailing me at [email protected] or calling 814-231-4043. I’d be happy to discuss their gift. And we are accepting five-year pledges.

Mimi: What was the biggest hurdle during the pandemic for you to keep up with and take the leadership in this community on vaccinating people, people from all walks of life, which was a new road for your mission? How’d you get to do it so well, so quickly?

Cheryl: Our primary interest was getting the vaccine to make it available for our patients because, like everything else they do in healthcare, we knew they would struggle to get the vaccine. I work with an amazing woman named Kristi Mattzela, our clinical services director, who worked with the Department of Health to get us listed as a provider and get us that vaccine. And she’s the one who came to me and said the community needs us, and we can do this.

First, we did 30 people here in the clinic, and then we did 50. And then one day we did 150. And she said we can do more, let’s go to the school district and do 1,200. And I thought that was a crazy idea. But I had faith in her. I had to trust her judgment and her plan. And we did 1,200, and it went off without a hitch. And she came to me that night, and she said the volunteers are standing around and want to do more. Let’s do 2,400. The process worked.

We just had so many volunteers who wanted to help with those clinics. We were able to harness that energy and make that run like clockwork. And we’re still vaccinating. Now we’re giving third shots and boosters over at our new facility on Sandy Drive. And we’re going to be helping vaccinate children when those (vaccines) become available. And again, to me, for us to consider vaccinating children seems like such a huge hurdle. But I listened to the passion in Kristi’s voice when she talked about being able to do this, and I’m going to trust her plan, and by golly, we’re going to do it.

Mimi: What part of the organization’s success is because you have a working board, a board that supports you, helps collaborate with you, thinks with you?

Cheryl: I give them a lot of credit. They understand how a board should govern and how not to get into day-to-day operational issues. And so, I’m fortunate that the board members are very focused on the mission and like to discuss the big-ticket items and ideas. Of course, they do take their fiduciary responsibility very seriously. But as far as board governance, they believe that they’re the ones who help set the clinic’s vision.

Mimi: Are they people that are active in other things in the community?

Cheryl: Yes. Some have healthcare backgrounds, but they’re business leaders and bankers. And then, of course, we do have representation from our community partners, Mount Nittany Health, Geisinger and Penn State Health. I think we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention that we have community partners that we rely on for support, not just financial, but in-kind services and volunteers.

Mimi: It’s been a joy to have you as my interviewee today.

Cheryl: I am honored to be here today. This has been on my bucket list.

Mimi: Now it’s off. And let’s hope that you are overwhelmed with the kindness of this community.

Cheryl: Thank you.

This interview appears in the November 2021 issue of Town&Gown.