National Volunteer Recognition and Awards

David Lawrence Community Service Awards

Named in honor of Dr. David Lawrence, former CEO of Kaiser Permanente and lifelong advocate of improving health, our community service awards recognize individuals and groups that have demonstrated extraordinary efforts to improve the health of our communities. The DLCSA aims to honor exemplary service and also to inspire others toward community service.

Individual Awards: Domestic/US Service

Cynthia Atkinson
Supervisor
Fair Oaks, Virginia
Cynthia’s lifestyle exemplifies a true commitment to others. Her array of volunteer activities include volunteering at her church; organizing events with the Alzheimer’s Association; creating care packages for US troops; coordinating giving programs during the holiday, and rebuilding homes in the Gulf Coast.  Most recently, she spearheaded a weight loss campaign with her coworkers at the Clinical Contact Center. Of the 36 who participated, 338.6 pounds were shed in nine weeks. But her most memorable volunteer activity: she completed her first marathon in 2005 for the American Stroke Association in honor of her mother and daughter, who both died from complications of having a stroke. Cynthia doubled the $4,000 in donations required to participate.

Margaret DeKoven
Physician Assistant
Lakewood, Colorado
Margaret encourages children and their families to incorporate more fruits and vegetables into their daily diet through her volunteer work at Munroe Elementary School’s “Wellness in the Garden" program. Additionally, she participated in a similar project at Kepner Middle School. This community garden, located in a low income neighborhood in Denver, is rapidly expanding backyard gardens, recycling, and other sustainability projects in the area. The program started with four backyard gardens and last summer they ballooned to 87. An additional 100 are on the waiting list for this year. From her worksite at Lakewood Pediatrics, Margaret writes prescriptions to families, urging them to get active outdoors and limit their television time. She provides information about the benefits of being active outdoors and hands out local hiking trails and nature classes available in their area. She is also responsible for starting the flower and vegetable garden growing right outside the Lakewood clinic.

Huan Dong
Assistant Production Manager / Performer Educator
Oakland, California
Huan is a volunteer medic and section coordinator at the Berkeley Free Clinic (BFC), which provides free medical care, health education, and counseling to individuals in underserved communities. Since 2008, he has been involved with the Gay Men's Health Collective (GMHC) at BFC. He donates his time alongside volunteer physicians and nurses to bring free testing, treatment, and harm reduction counseling to men of all ages and sexual orientations. Huan's experience has supported his work as a performer educator in the "Secrets" program of Educational Theatre Program of Northern California, which brings messages of HIV/STI prevention to tens of thousands of adolescents each year. Furthermore, he did outreach in Tanzania, bringing awareness of medical, social, and economic effects of HIV in rural and suburban villages in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Neal Lonky, MD
OB/GYN
Anaheim, CA
Working closely with the Orange County chapter of the National Association for Mental Illness (NAMI), Dr. Lonky helped the organization fulfill its mission of decreasing the stigma of mental illnesses and increasing awareness by leading and promoting an organization that has local and statewide influence on mental health care. In addition to serving on the NAMI board, Dr. Lonky (with help from his wife and children) created the NAMI web site, trained community trainers, and organized key events, including annual fundraisers. He was influential in publishing Spanish-language NAMI materials and he and his wife are politically active on the State level to bring awareness of NAMI and mental illness to the legislature. Furthermore, Dr. Lonky is involved with a program caring for veterans with mental illnesses.

David Pating, MD
Department Chief
San Francisco, CA
For more than two decades, Dr. Pating has helped improve access to mental health and substance abuse treatment and prevention services for California’s underserved communities. His volunteer work includes being a leader in policy, treatment, prevention, and education of mental health and substance abuse treatment. His commitment to treatment access for all communities has inspired his colleagues and his collaborators from the public health, criminal justice, and welfare systems. He sits on a vast number of community boards dedicated to improving the health of communities. Pating is an assistant clinical professor at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine and site-director of a fellowship program in addiction medicine.  He consulted for San Francisco City & County Department of Public Health, the Medical Board of California, California’s Administrative Offices of the Courts and 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Currently, Pating is a commissioner on California’s Mental Health Services Oversight and Accountability Commission (Proposition 63) and chairs its services committees.

Susan Reines, MD
Pediatrician
Atlanta, Georgia
After a pediatric clinic serving many refugees in metro Atlanta closed its doors, Dr. Reines became the driving force behind establishing the Refugee Pediatric Clinic, a joint effort between KP Georgia, the Southeast Permanente Medical Group and the DeKalb County Board of Health. Many of the clinic’s patients have been deprived of health care in their home countries and have neglected many health issues. From delivering prescriptions to a patient’s home to providing transportation to and from doctor’s appointments, Dr. Reines and the volunteers at the Pediatric Refugee Clinic go above and beyond the call of duty. Currently, Dr. Reines is trying to promote literacy among patients by providing new books through their Reach Out and Read program.

Sorawoot “Woody” Sorajjakool, RN, BSN
Assistant Clinical Director
Fontana, CA
There are roughly 120,000 Thais in Southern California and many either don’t have health insurance or do not seek regular checkups, mostly due to language or cultural barriers. As president of Thai Nurses Association of Southern California, Woody has been the leader in coordinating and structuring free health screenings and health education programs in the community. In addition to free annual screening events, he sees to it that free health education programs are provided several times a year at local temples and churches. These informative programs include exercise sessions, a lecture and healthy cooking demonstrations.

Individual Awards (International Service)

Keith Flachsbart, MD
Cardiac Surgeon
San Francisco, CA
For more than a decade, Dr. Flachsbart has traveled on medical missions to Russia and Albania performing cardiac surgical procedures to those who would otherwise not be able to afford it. He is also the founding member of the Albanian Cardiac Surgery Society. When Dr. Flachsbart began volunteering in Albania, he describes a very destitute country – doctors sold bananas to make a living. He and the rest of the volunteers had to bring their own food and water on their trips and stay with local families, since there were no hotels. Dr. Flachsbart has also trained dozens of young Albanian surgeons on his trips. He also volunteers for and is a board member of Heart-to-Heart, a medical children’s alliance in Russia.

Faisal Jehan
Vitreoretinal Specialist
Fontana, CA
Cataracts and diabetes can both lead to blindness if not treated. In communities that have limited access to healthcare, either disease can rob a person of their eyesight permanently. Dr. Jehan volunteers his time delivering total eye care to underserved individuals in both Los Angeles and Guatemala. He volunteers with organizations such as Hospital de la Family in Nuevo Progreso, Guatemala, performing cataract surgery every year for those not able to afford treatment. He is also affiliated with a community clinic in South Central Los Angeles, where he offers eye screenings every other month on the weekends. 

Thomas Kaschak
Podiatrist
Fresno, CA
For 11 years, Dr. Kaschak has coordinated and led annual visits to Vietnam with American surgeons, medical assistants, and anesthesiologists.  The team provides leg, foot and ankle care to patients at the Da Nang Orthopedic and Rehabilitation Hospital in Da Nang, Vietnam.  Each year, local patients and patients from outlying villages learn about their visit and travel to the hospital for evaluation, and hopefully, treatment of their conditions.  Many patients travel for several days with family members, some by foot or on bicycles, to reach the clinic. The team treats between 40-60 patients each year, mostly children and young adults. Many are seeking the correction of congenital deformities, old injuries, effects of cerebral palsy or polio, and it is not uncommon to encounter patients who still suffer injuries from the war or from more recent encounters with unexploded bombs and landmines.

Darla Morfin
Marriage and Family Therapist
Aliso Viejo, CA
Darla is one of six of the founding board members of Ordinary Women Inc., which provides community health and the care of orphaned and vulnerable children, widows, and families in rural Kiminini village in Northwestern Kenya. The group raises money to drill water wells, servicing the communities with clean water. They also hold health seminars on HIV/AIDS and hygiene and facilitate free medical mobile clinics every year since 2004. In 2008, Darla founded and became executive director of a program for 100 orphaned children in Kiminini, which has helped place children in guardian homes.

Spencer Rickwa, MD
Family Medicine
Otay Mesa, CA
Dr. Rickwa is the medical director and co-founder of Bridges to Healing (BTH) International, which is dedicated to providing health care for children living in orphanages in Tijuana, Mexico. This all-volunteer medical team provides periodic full physical examinations, necessary lab and radiologic tests as well as appropriate follow-up and specialist referral. BTH attempts to do complete screenings and preventive care as well as health education for the children and orphanage staff.  BTH networks within the local health care community and also fully funds a full-time nurse on staff to work in each orphanage and tend to the daily medical needs with a particular emphasis on those children with chronic illnesses and orphans with disabilities.

James Toth, MD
Ambulatory Medicine
Sugar Hill, Georgia
Dr. Toth helped establish the Whitney Clinic, a year-round care facility providing free or low cost primary, pediatric and dental care to thousands of Haitians. The area of Hinche, Haiti, where the Whitney Clinic is located, does have a hospital, but because of the pre-pay policy, many residents can’t afford to get care. Dr. Toth serves as the clinic’s medical director and travels there a few times a year, encouraging local physicians to volunteer with him. Among his many accomplishments, he was instrumental in bringing safe water systems to homes in the area to help combat the region’s Cholera epidemic. Through his church, Dr. Toth also helped build a soup kitchen and institute a medical malnutrition program, which provides malnourished children with a proper diet to help them reach a healthy weight in a matter of weeks. Each week, hundreds of Haitians rely on the services of the Whitney Clinic. They also lend space at the clinic for certified nurses and midwives who are educating Haitian women about prenatal care and skilled birth assistance to reduce Haiti’s newborn and maternal mortality rate.

Group Award (Domestic/US Service)

KP Quilters
Northwest
Since 2003, this group, which started with three volunteers and grew to 60, has been making quilts to donate to a local organization providing comprehensive medical exams and interviews for children who are victims of abuse or neglect. Additionally, KP Quilters conducts fund raising efforts to help provide clothing, toiletries and dental hygiene products to children in need.

Group Award (International Service)

Faces of Tomorrow
Northern California
Created in 2007 by KP physician Brian Rubinstein, this organization is heavily made up of Kaiser Permanente physicians and support staff from all over Northern California who travel annually to Ecuador and the Philippines to provide surgeries and care for individuals with a range of craniofacial anomalies. These surgeries are making significant changes in the lives of thousands of children and adults served by Faces of Tomorrow. In one example, the team repaired a cleft lip for a 38-year-old woman from Ecuador, giving her the confidence to look for employment.