Throughout the country the institutions managed by publicly elected officials are the pillars upon which the quality of life is built.  In our community these institutions include city and county government, school boards and our district hospital which is chartered to foster the delivery of quality health care throughout the community.

For many of us the quality healthcare is very personal.  My mother was able to live to see her twin grand-daughters because of medical advancements not available when I was growing up.  Her life was extended using a Cyber-knife developed here locally and my twin girls have had a happy, healthy childhood because of advancements in NICU technology and care despite being born at 32 weeks, weighing just 3 ¼ pounds each.

My emotional commitment to these local institutions runs deep.  My father served as El Camino Hospital's 3rd Chief of Staff in 1963.  My mother served for more than two decades in public office – on the Board of the Foothill-De Anza Community College District and as City Councilwoman and Mayor of Mountain View.

El Camino Hospital is prominent in some of my early memories:  I remember getting my first tetanus shot after stepping on a nail at the construction site that was to be my father’s medical office across the street from El Camino Hospital.  Getting my tonsils out was less painful not so much for the plentiful ice cream but for having my father and our family friends constantly stopping by my hospital bed.

My professional background includes experience as both a small businessman and high-tech executive.  I owned my own small business, Sylvan Learning Center franchises, that tutors children in grades K-12 for more than 20 years and have worked at world-class, technology companies such Dell, IBM and HP as well as at start-ups.  The past 20 years I have been leading global e-commerce and digital marketing teams.

The values I learned by watching what my family did, as well as what they said, emphasize ethical, not just legal, obligations to the stewardship of public resources - including broad access for all.  As board members, I agree with the Institute for Local Government that:

“In public service, your responsibility to do what you believe is best for your community trumps the value of loyalty. The ethical approach, and what the public expects you to do, is what's best for your community."

I live in Los Altos with my wife Karla and twin 16-year old girls Kelly and Sarah. My educational background includes: my graduation from Los Altos High School, an AB from Harvard and an MBA from Stanford.

Community Service

The commitment that we as citizens of a society have to invest our time in our community was ingrained in my psyche from the very beginning –  my parents set the example based on their actions.

By the time I was 7 my mother had been elected to the Foothill Community College Board of Trustees and my father had become the Chief of Staff at El Camino Hospital.  Throughout the 60’s I walked door-to-door for my mother’s re-election campaign and propositions long since forgotten.  Part of achieving the rank of Eagle Scout is a community service project: I worked with the local library to develop a community needs assessment survey that contributed to the library’s future service offerings.

At Almond grade school I was a fixture at the early morning student council meetings and was elected Secretary of my 8th grade class at Egan Junior High in spite of delivering what, at least to me, appeared to be the most nervous, shaky-hand speech ever given by an 8th grader.  At Los Altos High I was elected Secretary of our junior class and Vice-President of our Senior Class.  Admittedly our most notable accomplishment was the revival of the Senior Class prom – a tradition that had disappeared through the transition of the late 60’s and early 70’s.  Luckily for me, there are no known, surviving photos of me in a powder blue tuxedo.

I believe that as part of our obligation as citizens we should have a national draft that would require everyone to invest at least one year in military or social service.  After college I spent one year as a VISTA community organizer in New Orleans working to empower the very same families that were largely displaced by the Hurricane Katrina.  Our greatest success was supporting the local community leaders in their efforts to release millions of dollars of Section 8 rent subsidy dollars that were sitting unused in the local Housing Authority bank account intended for the needy families of New Orleans.

Following my year in New Orleans I spend 9 ½ weeks of a 10 week Marine Corp Officer Candidates School (OCS) in Quantico, Virginia.  This was a program that allowed me to test myself against the best and to learn a great deal of respect for our military.  OCS is designed to allow candidates such as myself to participate but to choose not to continue before accepting a commission.   While I earned my commission as a second lieutenant I chose to begin my career in the private sector.

In college, I took a semester off and worked on Capitol Hill for Congressman Pete McCloskey.  Later I took time off from Hewlett-Packard to work as the Northern California Director for Ed Zschau in his campaign for US Senate.  I also had the opportunity to work for Steve Poizner in his campaign for the Assembly.

One of my proudest accomplishments was at Stanford Graduate School of Business where I co-founded the Challenge for Charity.  Challenge for Charity (C4C) is a year long competition among 6 west coast business school culminating in a weekend of competitive events that raises money for local charities.  The competition continues to succeed with multiple goals:

1. Involve professionals in their community at the beginning of their careers
2. Allow students from different schools to interact
3. Raise funds for charities such as the special Olympics.

DISTRICT HOSPITALS

There is a role for government at all three of our levels – local, state and federal.  Government at the local level is best at understanding the needs of local constituents to which it is directly delivering services.  The major pillars of our community are included here – city government, school districts and hospitals.  State and Federal governments are more effective in ensuring that we have the physical and regulatory infrastructure necessary to protect our citizens in need and ensure the private sector has an opportunity to compete and thrive.  I am a believer in Schumpeter’s theory of  “creative destruction” as it is generally used today and as we have observed, experienced and benefited from here in Silicon Valley.

The enterprise Hospital district is a unique construct in California.  Its state granted charter, as enumerated in Health & Safety code secion 32121(j), is to provide “health services, including but not limited to outpatient programs, services and facilities, retirement programs, services and facilities… or other health care programs or services and facilities and activities at any location within or without the district for the benefit of the district and the people served by the district.”

This charter, which realistically acknowledges that we can’t and don’t put up literal or physical walls preventing people in adjacent communities from receiving healthcare services from hospital districts also provides significant benefits to healthcare community residents.  While El Camino Health does provide uncompensated care for all comers, including people who reside outside the district, roughly half of all services the hospital provides are to citizens from outside the district. The contribution margin out-of-district residents generate from the services they receive essentially subsidizes the operations of the hospital for the district residents – allowing El Camino Health to provide superior quality to what it could if it only provided services to district residents.

El Camino Health is a hybrid; a hybrid that, depending on governance and management can be the best or worst of both worlds.  In a best case scenario, as a locally owned and managed institution, actively and transparently engaged with the community, we have been able to provide nationally recognized quality that is aligned with community needs.  In a worst case scenario, as we have seen with other districts around the state, where the hospital is not controlled by the district and its publicly elected officials (including the sale of the hospital to an entity with minimal community ties who treat the hospital purely as a financial asset), hospitals’ quality can atrophy, leading to poor financials and a downward spiral of diminishing quality and financials.

As a nation we face an unsustainable growth in our healthcare expenditures which have grown from 7 to over 18% of our  GDP -- approaching $4 Trillion in too short a timeframe.  We have been unable to develop the proper structure to provide high quality, affordable health care insurance for everyone in the country.  This challenge has not been solved anywhere around the world; while US’ healthcare expenditure as a share of GDP is the highest, the expenditure growth rate is comparable among most developed countries over the past several decades

In local communities each hospital job supports two other jobs.  Until the growth of Google, El Camino Hospital had been the largest employer in Mountain View and supported jobs throughout the county. 

The mission of our hospital must be to focus on providing the best quality healthcare for the most people in our district (and surrounding areas) – now and far into the future.  We have undertaken important scenario planning analysis that will enable us to respond to different potential structural changes in the healthcare industry and reimbursements as defined by lawmakers in Washington and Sacramento.  It is not our charter to solve these broader problems, but to anticipate the needs of the community and prepare to serve this community as it evolves.  The board’s responsibility is to be the long term steward of this community asset and ensure, as we approach our 60 year anniversary that we remain a vibrant, independent institution for the next 60 years.

Moved to Silicon Valley at the end of 1958, graduated from Cupertino High School, went to San Jose State and DeAnza.

Served eight years on the Sunnyvale City Council including serving as Mayor.  Completed eight years on the El Camino Healthcare District and now running for re-election for my final term.

My experience in local and regional politics (BAAQMD and ABAG), as Mayor of Sunnyvale, and as a Lockheed Martin employee, have taught me to build alliances and be accountable. My experience on the board of the Association of California Healthcare Districts gave me additional experience to continue serving you on the District Board at El Camino Hospital.

I am dependable, accountable to my constituents, and accessible.

I would be honored to have your support and vote on November 3, 2020.

Dear Voter,

I have lived and worked in this community for almost 40 years, in Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Mountain View and Sunnyvale.  I had participated in many community organizations including youth sports and mentorship, health outreach and education and volunteered my clinical services with non profit organizations.  I had practiced cardiology in the community for 30 years, at Stanford, Santa Clara County, the VA, Kaiser, PAMF and had practiced inpatient cardiology at El Camino Hospital for 20 years.  Being a cardiologist, I work with all departments except for pediatrics.  Both acute and outpatient care systems are familiar to me, and I had the privilege to be involved in many administrative and leadership positions both at Kaiser and PAMF.  I also have over 20 years of board experience, being on the general  board and then the executive board for the Stanford University Medical Alumni Board, the general board of The Center for Practical Bioethics, and as the Commissioner for AYSO (youth soccer)/Los Altos.  

Our healthcare district is very unique in that we have a community based hospital, governed by its members.  It had done well over the last decade, but the greater society and economy is changing.  I am running because I think healthcare will undergo tremendous changes within the next couple of years, accelerated by COVID.  Americans spend twice as much as other rich countries on healthcare, but we have worse outcomes.  Moreover, there is tremendous inequity in healthcare, with many minorities and children having inadequate healthcare. This is not sustainable, and we need to explore options to mitigate these issues.  Public health is poorly leveraged and health education is not readily available to the general public.  I believe that I have the best skill set to approach healthcare in an innovative, efficient and collaborative way, building systems within the community that will provide the best and more equitable healthcare for our constituents. 

Dr. Meghan Fraley is a Clinical Psychologist and Clinical Director of the Cielo House treatment center. She holds a Master’s in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago and a PhD in Clinical Psychology from Sofia University. She founded the South Bay/Peninsula Raise the Wage Coalition, leading to $15/hr pay for 95% of min wage workers in Santa Clara County and is a former board member of the Northern California ACLU.