Archives

New status leads to growth for Native clinic

PHOENIX — The oldest and largest Native American health clinic in central Phoenix plans to expand now that it has earned a much sought-after accreditation for its services.

Native Health, a nonprofit that serves more than 12,000 people annually, got a thumbs up from the Accreditation Association for Ambulatory Healthcare late this summer, validating its treatments for dental, medical, mental health and wellness issues.

This will allow the organization to celebrate its 30th anniversary this year in a big way, Native Health officials say.

“It will bring growth, of course, and help develop the medical program and focus on the patients with the most need, like prenatal and substance abuse,” says Native Health CEO Dr. Richard Zephier.

The nonprofit plans on opening two more clinics in the near future, says Craig Pattee, a program development specialist at the clinic. The new locations will be in Mesa and the far West Valley, which will complement the existing clinic near Central and Campbell avenues.

Officials say they would like to focus on developing health issues in the Native American community, such as diabetes and hypertension. They also intend to take other insurance plans than just one plan under AHCCCS, Arizona’s version of Medicaid for impoverished families.

Native Americans are also eligible for free health care through a federal agency. But Pattee said it is really used as a last resort.

“Once we’re able to take more [insurance plans], it will make more people eligible to get service through us,” Pattee says.

That’s why gaining accreditation was so important. Native Health officials say getting accredited by the Illinois-based AAAHC took several years and tons of advice from hired consultants who had been through the process, Pattee says.

Accreditation is also like a quality guarantee. This means Arizona regulators will be auditing Native Health’s records less frequently and more federal grants will be coming in to support programs.

“It’s kin to product branding,” Zephier says. “Having the certificate meets our projected growth.”

= = =

>>Email the editor at aklaw@zoniereport.com.

In Phoenix, an answer for chain stores and recessions

PHOENIX — A middle-aged man walked in just after Drip Coffee Lounge opened at 7:30 a.m. His drink, a small double-shot café americano latte with organic low-fat milk, was already being made for him by the owner herself, Gina Madrid. They chat briefly in a vernacular that exclusively exists between barista and regular before the local man pays in exact change and walks out.

It was just the beginning of another successful day for the Downtown Phoenix small business model.

“One of the reasons why I opened Drip was because […at chain eateries] you walk away and you feel… ill,” Madrid says as she adjusted the volume on the iPod speakers. Her independently owned cafe has a modern architectural design, and business cards of local artists and entrepreneurs line the front counter.

“When you are providing something good for yourself, that in turn spills over to the people next to you, and so on.”

Independently owned small businesses in the Downtown Phoenix historic districts have thrived in the face of an influx of corporate chains to the city because of their adaptability and willingness to work together.

“When you drive down the street, you’re gonna see the Applebee’s, but you’re not gonna see the Stinkweeds right across the street, or know what it is,” says Kimber Lanning, owner of both Stinkweeds Records on Camelback Road at Central Avenue and Modified Arts, a popular music venue and art gallery on Fifth and Roosevelt streets.

Lacking the financial clout of a large corporation, local entrepreneurs say they rely on adaptable business models to contend in the Phoenix economy.

For example, Lanning has kept her independent record store open for over two decades, battling the ability of national chains to heavily reduce music prices by catering to niche markets like vinyl, used CD’s and obscure musical genres. She even hosts “blues brunches” at the shop with live musical performance on the weekend.

“Every week we reevaluate our budget and say, ‘We need more imports. We need more used,’” Lanning says of Stinkweeds as she jovially rings up a customer and greets him by name. “Whatever it is that we need more of, and we’re able to do that on a week-to-week basis, and the big chains aren’t able to do that.”

Hayes McNeil, co-owner of Royal Coffee Bar on Jackson Street at Second Avenue in Downtown, agrees a limited supply and quick accommodation of regular customers are crucial tactics to a locally owned business’ survival.

“Because we’re small, we’re flexible, and can keep up on our product more,” McNeil says. “If you have multiple stores, especially hundreds of stores, you have one kind of product, one way of doing things. If we want to change the way we’re doing things, we can change in a matter of minutes, really.”

The true secret to survival for Downtown Phoenix small businesses, however, may be their mindset of mutual cooperation.

“All the Downtown businesses have this sort of camaraderie,” Lanning says. “They’re just, like, ‘Yes! We survived the light rail construction, we’re down here, we’re the pioneers, and we’re in it together.’ Everybody’s helping each other.

“So I thought it would be cool to start a website that was just these little businesses that have opened up,” she says. “I just wanted to build some civic pride, let people know that there is cool stuff [in Phoenix]; you just have to look a little bit harder for it.”

Lanning did just that, forming Local First Arizona in 2003, and eventually selling her other Stinkweeds location in Tempe in 2006 to devote more time to the nonprofit’s website. Localfirstaz.org features a database of 1,400 locally owned Arizona businesses and helps them promote themselves and form partnerships.

It is believed to be the largest such merchant coalition in the country.

“[Localfirstaz.com] is really helpful, for sure. It looks professional,” McNeil says. “And that’s why the local businesses work together, because you know, you have to have maybe 20 businesses doing the [advertising] work of one chain.”

Many local storefronts also combine enterprise, sharing space or exchanging products in order to attract customers. For example, Madrid lends her kitchen at Drip to Sam Filicetti, also known as “Sam the Chocolate Guy” and owner of ib2 Designer Chocolates. Filicetti creates his scrumptious confections from behind the café storefront, then distributes his products for sale at Drip and other Downtown Phoenix establishments.

“It’s really nice when local businesses use each others’ products,” Filicetti says, his amicable and goofy personality matching his light-hearted products. “It’s sort of the trend right now, you know, to utilize space more efficiently.

“It’s a great [business model]. It reduces competition: It’s more or less a synergy of people working together to bring together the best products, the best local products.”

McNeil and his partner Vincent Huizar say their similarly symbiotic relationship with adjacent Sweet Pea Bakery. The prospects of cooperation and mutual support were major incentives for Royal Coffee Bar’s current location.

“Obviously baked goods go well with coffee, and they were already here, so it seemed like a pretty good setup,” McNeil says. “The main thing is we serve each others’ products. She (Danielle Librera of Sweet Pea) does all our baked goods for us […] We have people who bring our coffee over there, and then they bring her products over here. We do catering together, and really try to serve on each others’ products.”

“Essentially, we can be in three places at once” by working together and sharing space and products, Madrid says. Her Drip Coffee Lounge also works in heavy partnership with the row of local businesses on Seventh Street north of McDowell Road to “create a destination space” of their grassroots effort.

“My biggest wish is that people come here, to Sheridan Square, and they don’t even know where they’re gonna go,” Madrid says while serving a slowly rising stream of customers. “We all come with our own expertise and our own uniqueness to build something that’s even bigger than ourselves and even more unique.”

The relationship between these small and independently owned businesses and the Downtown Phoenix historic district community extends past detached service and into active membership.

“I think very much that [local businesses] should offer the best customer service, should reinvest in their community—naturally, inherently, do reinvest in their communities, because they hire local CPA’s, local sign makers, local attorneys,” Lanning says. “If I need a carpenter, I’m gonna hire a local guy, whereas all of that would get outsourced at a national chain.”

This reinvestment in the local economy may have resounding benefits for Downtown Phoenix. Shopping local ensures that 45 cents of every dollar spent stays in Arizona, as opposed to 13 cents spent at national chains, according to Local First Arizona’s website.

Many local businesses also take part in community events like First Friday art walks, acoustic concerts and charity auctions. These stores and their owners are fully integrated with Downtown Phoenix and each other, willing to adapt to the changing Phoenix marketplace, because such a business model is best suited for their survival.

Arizona entrepreneurs are not always just a community in the sense of economic cooperation, either; Madrid and McNeil are literally neighbors in the Coronado Historic District.

“Most people who own businesses down here actually do live here,” McNeil says. “I mean, it is our neighborhood.”

= = =

>>Email the editor at aklaw@zoniereport.com.

Arizona growth poses religious challenge

PHOENIX — Arizona is set to experience religious growing pains after waves of new residents have made it more religiously diverse than ever.

But the subtle shift in demographics does not necessarily mean Arizonans will practice more religious tolerance, an expert says. If anything, they’ll have to work harder at building a consensus with these new worshipers.

“Religious diversity does not translate into religious tolerance,” says Reverend Jan Flaaten, executive director of the Arizona Ecumenical Council, which brings together Christian denominations and keeps dialogues going with Jewish, Muslim and other faith communities.

“I suspect that the first time a mosque erects a minaret, there will be a neighborhood cry to take it down,” he said. “The only way to work on these issues is to have constructive dialogue between the religious groups, including the young in our schools and all the members of our various congregations.”

The irony is that people who practice an organized religion are moving into a region where being a loyal religious follower appears to be frowned upon.

The percentage of Arizonans who identify themselves as being affiliated with a particular religious tradition held steady at about 40 percent to 45 percent for at least three decades – far lower than the United States as a whole.

About 63 percent of people in the U.S. identify themselves with a religious tradition, according to the Association of Religious Data Archives. That figure falls to about 50 percent in the West as a whole and 45 percent in Arizona. Arizona ranks 41st out of the 50 states in people who identify with a religious tradition, according to ARDA data.

Further evidence of less enthusiasm for religion in the West comes from a Gallup Poll released this past July. In the West, 59 percent of the respondents professed a belief in God, compared with 80 percent in the East, 83 percent in the Midwest and 86 percent in the South. Those who say they believe in a higher power of some sort equal 29 percent in the West, 14 percent in the East, 11 percent in the Midwest and 10 percent in the South. Those who reject belief in God altogether total 10 percent in the West, 6 percent in the East, 5 percent in the Midwest and 3 percent in the South.

“There are several possible reasons for reduced interest in religion in Arizona and the West,” says Stephen Merino, an ARDA research associate who grew up in Colorado. “As the West was being settled, there was no rich religious culture similar to the cultures that came from Europe to the American Northeast and South, so the tradition wasn’t in place. Second, originally the West was settled predominantly by men, who tend to be less concerned than women about establishing and keeping religious traditions. Also, there is that staunch individualism of the West. People often prefer to be left alone instead of affiliating.”

But loyal followers of several religions are moving into Arizona neighborhoods.

Major religious demographic data is collected every 10 years by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies and distributed by ARDA. In 2000, that data showed Arizona’s population was 5.1 million.

By 2006 – the last year for which an estimate was available on the U.S. Census Bureau Web site – the state’s population was estimated to have grown by 1 million people.

Flaaten says the state’s religious profile will have changed even more when the next set of data is presented in 2010 by ARDA. He says some of the new trends will include:

• A greater presence of both Jews and Muslims in the state. Both populations present challenges in developing solid demographic data, Flaaten says, and he believes official counts from 2000 of about 80,000 Jews in the state and 12,000 Muslims could have been low. He says that there has been a strong Jewish tradition in Arizona for decades, so don’t be surprised if there are more than 120,000 Jews and 75,000 Muslims in Arizona in 2010. Part of this growth, he said, is attributable to the general migration of people to the state. Also, he believes better methods will be in place for counting these populations in 2010, so the numbers will naturally increase.
• An expansion of Catholicism. Roman Catholics will continue to make up the largest religious population in the state. Arizona adherents grew from about 485,000 in 1980 to nearly 975,000 in 2000 and should easily exceed 1 million by 2010. The church, which also is the single largest religious body in the U.S., will benefit from the migration of Catholics from other states and particularly from Latin American countries south of the U.S. border, of which many are predominantly Catholic.
• Steady growth of the Mormon faith. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which grew in the state from about 140,000 in 1980 to more than 250,000 by 2000, also will show an increase. This should be attributable primarily to growth in individual LDS families, not by converts.
• A steady decline of Southern Baptists. The Southern Baptist Convention, whose Arizona members numbered nearly 140,000 in 2000 after reaching about 163,000 in 1990, will probably continue to decline in the state. Watch for the rift in social issues to grow, Flaaten says. “This church body is part of the larger group of evangelical Christians, and this group generally is divided on whether Christians should pursue a broader role in society that includes a social justice agenda. Evangelicals, for example, are firmly united in their anti-abortion convictions, but there is an increasing variety of opinions about how to address the whole of life for children once they’re born. Should the church be active in advocating mandatory health care benefits? Should it be fighting for better education systems? Or should it focus on its primary job of preaching the Gospel? As these and other issues develop, they sometimes split churches. This is happening in the SBC, and because it’s not a denomination but rather just an association of congregations, it’s easy for individual congregations to break off and become independent or affiliate with some other group. As a result, membership is declining.”
• A large expansion of Pentecostalism. The Assemblies of God, a Pentecostal church body, nearly quadrupled from about 20,000 to about 80,000 between 1980 and 2000, and Flaaten expects growth to continue. “Many people don’t realize it, but after Roman Catholicism, Pentecostalism is the second-largest expression of Christianity in the world,” he said. “It’s especially significant in Latin America. Arizona is attracting a number of people from that area, and the Assemblies of God should benefit from that. Many people want a religion that engages both their mind and their emotions, and this church body will see an increase because of that hunger within people.”
• A plateau and decline in the number of Protestants here. Flaaten expects most denominations within mainline Protestantism to show a decrease in 2010, with the exception of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. “The ELCA has been growing, not because of conversions and outreach efforts, but simply because so many people are moving to Arizona from heavily Lutheran states like Minnesota,” said Flaaten, who is himself a member of the ELCA. “For most of the other mainline denominations, the figures probably will hold steady or decline.”

These trends will eventually force Arizonans to become more religiously aware.

“Unless we talk about and to people of other faiths, we will always be suspicious and perhaps fearful,” Flaaten says. “This isn’t difficult, but many of our faith community teachings have an ‘absolute truth’ quality about them, which limits the truth of other believers in God. So we have that obstacle to overcome, but it is possible to create curricula that help us all in the dialogue.”

= = =

>>Email the editor at aklaw@zoniereport.com.