NHC SF Member Blog: Alumni Spotlight - Meet Whitney Francis, NHC SF 2019-2020 Alumna!

Emily C. is the 2025-2026 Food Access Coordinator at the SFHN – Food As Medicine Collaborative. She graduated this past May from the University of San Francisco with a BA in Politics and Environmental Studies.

As part of NHC’s Humans of NHC Campaign, Emily chose to highlight NHC San Francisco Alumna, Whitney Francis, who served as the Food Pharmacy Coordinator with the Food As Medicine Collaborative in NHC San Francisco’s inaugural 2019-2020 Cohort.

Read on to learn more about Whitney’s journey towards policy advocacy and how NHC has, and continues to shape, her career!

Emily: Hi Whitney, I’m super excited to chat with you today! I know a little bit about you and the route you took after NHC, so I’m looking forward to hearing more about it.

I'll just go ahead and start. So, what role did you have while you were an NHC AmeriCorps member?

Whitney: I was a Food Pharmacy Coordinator, which is now called Food Access Coordinator. But yeah, I was the first AmeriCorps member for the Food as Medicine Collaborative.

Emily: What skills would you say you learned or expanded while serving as an NHC AmeriCorps member?

Whitney: Generally speaking, I expanded a lot on just coordination skills. With food pharmacies, we're working with so many different clinics throughout the city. At the time, I was working directly in food pharmacies at four different clinics across the city, so, just everything from check-ins with staff at those sites and then coordinating with the food bank. Also, all the different people involved with food pharmacies, like dieticians, nutritionists, staff, and nurses at the clinic to make sure all the different pieces are running smoothly and that we're also, collecting the data that we need and making sure we get feedback from patients so that we can improve the program. You learn, but I don't know, you develop a relationship with the staff there and also the patients that you see week after week. So, I think those relationships also were really insightful in a lot of ways of helping me learn and understand the ways in which our program was working and how things could improve while understanding the way that our program fit into the larger healthcare or health system within the clinics and the neighborhood.

Emily: Yeah, totally. I definitely feel the same way, being in the same role. It's nice to see the impact you are having on the larger community around you. I mean, that was kind of what the next question was: what was the most impactful part of your service? If you want to talk about it a little bit more.

Whitney: Sure. Yeah, I think the most impactful part of my service was in large part those relationships that I built with patients and with staff. At the heart of it, besides helping people to manage their chronic conditions through food, those relationships that you build through food pharmacy are also a big part of what the program is about. Building trust with patients helps bridge the gap between patients and the overall clinic. I felt like that was the thing that I looked forward to the most was seeing patients and following up with them, asking, “what did you think of the Brussels sprouts last week?” or “how are you feeling this week? And how's your family?”

I feel like that's something that I still think about today. And I think another impactful part of my service was just having such a great mentor in my supervisor, Erin Franey. I felt like Erin really –we had a good working relationship, and she taught me a lot. She really gave me a lot of opportunities to step up and take ownership of certain projects and really helped me to feel more confident as a leader and in my role. She gave me a lot of exposure to different opportunities, so that was also impactful for me.

Emily: That’s really nice to hear, I love that there are experiences you still think about even now. So, what are you up to now?

Whitney: I'm currently a Policy Advocate at the Western Center on Law and Poverty. I work on state level healthcare policy, so a lot of it tends to be on Medi-Cal – ways to improve the Medi-Cal program, whether it be ensuring that people have access to Medi-Cal, but also helping to make sure that that access then translates to people actually being able to get care. I also work on other issues, like a little bit on birthing justice and a little bit on SNAP and guaranteed income, statewide policy. So yeah, there are a wide variety of issues, but all aimed at improving the lives of low-income Californians.

Emily: Your work sounds really interesting. It’s nice to see you still working in a related field, and it sounds like you enjoy it. While all these things are related, with your AmeriCorps service term being in public health, what piqued your interest in policy work?

Whitney: I studied environmental science in undergrad with a focus on things like sustainable food and agriculture. I always thought I would be more on the production side of things in the food system. But I did the AmeriCorps program with Food Pharmacy, and I feel like I had such a unique vantage point of the public health system because we're working directly with patients, we're in the clinics and, at the time, my desk was in the population health team at SFDPH. I got a view of the public health system and SF from patients all the way up to the upper management, who are making decisions that impact the clinic and the patient. So, one, I think that unique vantage point through the AmeriCorps, my AmeriCorps service term, really piqued my interest in public health because before that I didn't really know what public health was.

The idea of focusing on prevention and being able to impact a population, rather than simply just individuals, was also really interesting to me. And just generally the opportunity to think about systems was interesting. Because my service term was 2019 to 2020 and halfway through, the pandemic started. I also saw the initial city and county response to the pandemic, and it was a really challenging, tough time. I just saw there were a lot of successes and folks organizing coming together to make sure that our patients had what they needed. But at the same time, it just made me reflect a lot on what happens, like if our program were to end.

And just thinking about how a lot of our patients, not all of them, but like a significant number of them, deal with food insecurity, and so many more people after them will continue to struggle with food insecurity. And as I was thinking about that issue and thinking about how we address food insecurity from its root causes to prevent people from falling into it in the first place. To me the answer was like, “Oh, policy is the way that we address these systemic, complex issues.” So, after my service term, I went to Berkeley and got my Master's in Public Health and Master's in City Planning, with an eye towards knowing that I wanted to do policy work.

Emily: I love hearing that. I feel like I had the opposite thing because I majored in Politics and Environmental Studies, so I kind of came into this with a policy approach. I feel like FAMC specifically is one of the ones that's the “easiest” host sites to have that policy lens with.

Whitney: Definitely!

Emily: So then what expectations, if any, did you have about your AmeriCorps experience that turned out to be different from reality?

Whitney: I’m not sure that I had a lot of expectations going into it just because I didn't really know anyone else who had done AmeriCorps before. I think one thing that I was pleasantly surprised by was the cohort aspect of NHC. I felt like that was really helpful. I couldn't imagine doing an AmeriCorps program without a cohort just because you're doing really cool work and everything, but sometimes it is a struggle, and it was just nice to have other folks who are going through the same thing as you. And it made some of the service projects outside of our Host Sites really fun and something that I looked forward to. It was just really nice to come out of the experience with friends after 10 months of working closely together.

Emily: Yeah, I completely agree. I think the cohort's really important and special, especially because it can be hard to explain exactly what you do, but the people in the cohort just get it.

Whitney: Yeah!

Emily: How do you think your role with NHC prepared you for your current experience?

Whitney: That's a good question. I feel like NHC at the time we were just starting, or FAMC was just starting too. FAMC was in the early stages of really advocating for the inclusion of food as medicine programs in Medi-Cal, like CalAIM.

CalAIM is a statewide waiver to pilot innovative services in Medi-Cal that are outside of the traditional healthcare system, but that impacts people's health. So, in a lot of ways, I was just really inspired by a lot of that policy work that I saw Erin and other folks at FAMC and our partners working on. I felt like during my time in grad school, I thought a lot about the work that I did as I was learning more formally about public health. I don't know in what ways it prepared me exactly, but just the experience. I reflected on it a lot, and now it just feels full circle because I'm getting to work alongside all these people that I looked up to, and now I get to work alongside them on policy. So, it also, in part, just feels like maybe if anything, like all the professional and personal relationships and connections that I made during my time at NHC were really impactful. I still have those relationships and like to rely and lean on those folks, and it’s nice to have an opportunity to work with those people, too. In that way, I feel like it prepared me for life post-NHC.

Emily: That’s really beautiful, Whitney. What do you hope to do next?

Whitney: That's a great question. I know that I want to continue doing policy advocacy work. I'm not sure what that looks like for what's next. I've been a state-level policy advocate for two years. So yeah, I just want to keep doing what I can to improve public health and to improve our healthcare system. So, we'll see what the future holds but definitely continuing policy advocacy.

Emily: I love hearing how much you enjoy what you’re doing now. What advice would you give to new and incoming members?

Whitney: That's a good question. I feel like maybe this is cliche and everyone always says this, but you get out of the program what you put into it. I feel like that really holds true in the sense of investing in, or spending time building relationships with the folks at your host site and with your other NHC members. I think as an NHC member, you do have a lot on your plate, like the work at your Host Site, meeting the hours and just being a human and living life. But I think it's a unique opportunity to be curious and reach out to folks doing stuff that you think is cool. And building relationships. People are always more than happy, more than willing to talk to you and take you under their wing and everything. So, it is a great time to explore what's out there and what's possible.

Emily: Well, that was my last question. It was really nice talking to you today. I just have to say it's so nice to hear a success story, if you will, of someone that took a policy route. I think your story is so inspiring because it’s clear you love what you do. Thank you so much for your time, Whitney!

Whitney: It was really nice talking to you too, Emily!

About the Author

Emily Choto is one of the 2025-2026 NHC San Francisco Members. Emily is currently serving as the Food Access Coordinator with the San Francisco Health Network’s Food As Medicine Collaborative.