Martha Molina Bernadett, MD, MBA is the daughter of parents who made education the top priority for their five children. And she’s never forgotten their message.
Today, her multifaceted life reflects the results of that emphasis. Dr. Bernadett has used her advance-degree medical skills as a family physician, and more recently, she has focused her advance-degree business skills and boundless energy into the Molina Foundation. “I loved being a family doctor,” she said during a recent interview in the Foundation’s warehouse in Torrance, “but I know that what I’m doing now reaches a larger audience.”
And who is this larger audience? Children without access to books. Poor children. Non-English speakers. Children in underserved areas. She said her goal when she set up the non-profit foundation in 2004 was to provide books to children in an effort to improve literacy. “But the long-term goal,” she said, “is to overcome barriers to healthcare access and [to] impact their overall health status.”
The Foundation’s program is called Book Buddies, and its supervisor is Kellie Cairns, who, as Dr. Bernadett’s original employee, has been with the Foundation for eight years. “The kids call me the Lady of the Books,” Cairns said during one busy morning when several young volunteers on spring break and some parents were sorting books and packing boxes for shelving or delivery. “They keep coming back to help, because they’ve all benefited from the program,” she said of her young charges.
To achieve the Foundation’s literacy goal, Dr. Bernadett said that it distributes 500,000 free books every year to needy schools. The inventory consists of more than one million books arriving annually from publishers who no longer want them. In schools where there are no libraries, the Foundation establishes one in an empty classroom, she explained. These schools, she went on, operate with limited resources. “We’ve set up more than 100 libraries in such schools or in after-school clubs. Some schools focus on afterschool sports, but many kids want to read [and we provide that opportunity],” Dr. Bernadett pointed out. And the Foundation’s Book Buddies program reaches youngsters in all 50 states.
“We also work with others like Operation Teddy Bear [a service for schoolchildren provided by the Volunteer Center],” she said. “Our books go into those [Teddy Bear] backpacks each fall. In fact, the Volunteer Center was instrumental in our development as a non-profit. They’re really an inspiration,” she went on, “and a good partner, because, like us, they give books to children.”
Another book-distribution connection is 4-H. “It reaches six million kids a year,” said Dr. Bernadett, who is a trustee of the National 4-H Council. “They offer so many opportunities for literacy, because they have this vast network for reaching children. They have captured my heart and interest,” she said.
The inspiration for the Molina Foundation—named, she said, to honor the legacy of her educator parents—came in 2003 in the form of a little boy who was waiting with his parents in the office of Molina Healthcare, Inc. “He wanted to take a book home after he had looked at it,” she recalled. “It occurred to us that he may not have had any at home.” And that’s how it started.
Molina Healthcare, founded by her father in Long Beach in 1980 after he had acquired a medical degree at age 50, “serves people who are indigent or on Medicaid,” she explained. “Our clinics are located in un-served areas, which is where our books are intended to go,” she added. (At present, 17 such clinics are located in California, Washington and Virginia, she said.)
And Molina Healthcare “actively contributes and funds the Foundation,” she said, but the Foundation also seeks grants to raise money to meet the objectives of its program,” according to Foundation literature.
Since its original Book Buddies program was launched in 2004, the Foundation has added Experience Counts, a mentoring program for school principals, and Step Up to Math, a math, science and technology program, to its services. More services such as these—to augment existing activities–are in the works, Dr. Bernadett said.
In addition to her focus on the Foundation, she currently serves on the University of California San Francisco Medical School PRIME –US Steering Committee to develop training programs that encourage physicians to train for and practice in urban, underserved communities. Throughout the years, Dr. Bernadett, now 48, has also served on several other boards.
Despite all these present and former professional demands, the Rolling Hills resident always has time to relax with her husband, Dr. Faustino Bernadett, and three daughters, the oldest of whom is in medical school.
Nothing like carrying on the family tradition.
On April 29, Dr. Martha Molina Bernadett will be receiving the “Heart and Soul Award” for her “passion, dedication and ongoing love for literacy within our community” from the Manhattan Beach Chamber of Commerce during its South Bay Conference for Women, a daylong program of “Inspiration/Reinvention” at the Torrance Marriott. Events begin at 7:30 a.m. and end at 3 p.m.
