Noha Aboelata, MD

I was born and raised in Oakland. When I finished medical training, I knew I was going to come home.

I was looking for the perfect place to land, a health center that really was about healing the community. I found a number of wonderful organizations to work in but kept feeling like I was just taking care of sick person after sick person. I couldn’t get down to the root causes of their illness and suffering. 

I looked at a lot of data and maps, and saw East Oakland lighting up for a lot of poor health outcomes and indicators—premature death, infant mortality, diabetes, frequent visits to the emergency department for asthma, people on probation and parole, school suspensions. We weren’t going to be able to address disparities if we weren’t looking at ways to address poverty itself, as well as racism, racial profiling, disproportionate incarceration, and the multigenerational impacts of all of that.

I envisioned a place where people could come and have their needs met. It really has grown organically from there. We put ourselves right in the middle of where we were seeing the greatest disparities—at 99th and East 14th. 

I feel like we’re just getting started, but it already has had a big impact on a lot of lives. People who don’t feel welcome or cared for in other places have come to call Roots their medical home.

Roots is a trusted place that people might intersect with at many different times in their lives. They could be walking out of jail and first encounter Roots. They could be living in an encampment and our mobile team comes to meet them there. They could be walking into one of our soap shops and say, “How can my son get a job here?” 

We meet people where they are in terms of their state of readiness. Whatever it is that they need or want, we are not here to judge. We are not here to impose our ideas or desires on people. We’re here to share our expertise and resources and our time and our care.

The way Roots has evolved has affirmed for me that we are needed here. People want more Roots. I hear that all the time: “If we had more Roots, we’d have less problems.” So we have not just a five-year plan—we have a five-generation plan. We will always be Oakland rooted.