Dr. Helen Bellanca is a family physician who has been practicing in Oregon since completing her residency at Oregon Health & Science University in 1999. For most of that time, she has worked as a primary care physician in Federally Qualified Health Centers, serving primarily uninsured Oregonians and those on Medicaid. She was honored as Oregon’s Rural Health Practitioner of the Year in 2004. She currently provides clinical care through Northwest Permanente.
After completing a master’s degree in public health and a Robert Wood Johnson Fellowship, Helen became engaged in health policy and advocacy, first with the Oregon Public Health Institute, where she worked on the prevention of childhood obesity. She then was medical director for the Oregon Foundation of Reproductive Health, where she was the co-creator of the One Key Question initiative promoting pregnancy intention screening in primary care.
When the coordinated care organization model was created, she joined Health Share of Oregon and served as its associate medical director. Her focus there was integration of behavioral health services and physical health care, and she collaborated with partners to create Project Nurture, which integrates substance-use treatment and maternity care for pregnant and postpartum women. The success of that program led to statewide expansion as Nurture Oregon.
Helen has valuable experience working with complex systems and alternative payment strategies to help communities get the care they need, and she is committed to working for universal health care with a single-payer strategy.