After seven years, Dr. Lisa Santora will end her tenure as the Chief Medical Officer at Beach Cities Health District at week’s end. Santora is taking a job as the Deputy Public Health Officer for Marin County.
The drive, she said, is to relocate her children to a more natural environment — it’s part of her own, personal purpose statement, she said, referring back to the purpose workshops that BCHD runs within the community. “My own purpose is to nurture a healthy, joyful and loving environment for my family and myself,” she said.
It’s an unexpected opportunity, Santora said, but a welcome one for a woman who wishes to raise her three- and five-year-old children to appreciate the natural world.
BCHD has achieved measurable gains in improving the health of its communities, largely due to Dr. Santora’s respect for data and passion for public health.
“There’s tons of measurement in what we do, in how we improve health, and she’s put the systems in to do those measurements and collect that data, and make it meaningful,” said Susan Burden, CEO of Beach Cities Health District.
One such measure from the 2007-08 school year to the most recent, childhood obesity in the Beach Cities has dropped from 20 percent to nine percent. Burden credited Santora for better linking public health data with the district’s programs and strategies.
“With that information we’re able to scientifically track and develop a direction for what we do in the school district,” Burden said.
But what the Health District and community both lose with Santora’s departure, Burden said, is a clear, authoritative voice for health information.
“She has a talent for taking what can be complex medical information and making it usable for staff and the public,” allowing for the organization’s Board of Directors to take clear stances when needed.
“She has an encyclopedic mind that runs really, really fast — when anyone has asked her about a random health issue, she would start correctly reciting research findings,” Burden said. “She’s brilliant. I felt we were so fortunate to have her.”
The feeling, Santora said, is mutual. “I think our community has so many assets, I’ve learned from our civically engaged community. They’re our best assets — I’m sitting on the shoulders of giants before me, and I’ve been really fortunate to learn from all of the people around me.”
Though the Health District will be missing Santora’s presence (“I’m disappointed when our talented people leave, but I know people are actively recruiting our staff,” Burden said), the process to find her replacement is already in motion.
It began with a detailed interview process with staff and the board, determining what the organization’s needs will be going forward. Through that, she learned that BCHD needs someone very similar to who they’re losing: A full-time medical director, certified in preventative medicine — in short, “someone with Lisa’s credentials,” Burden said. The ongoing search will continue through stages of increasing refinement over the course of the next months.
Qualifications are one thing — the cherry on top would be finding someone who matches Santora’s love for the South Bay. A Hermosa Beach resident since 2006, she fell in love with the city during her residency training six years prior.
“Hermosa has been my home for me and my family,” Santora said, recalling a recent Sunday night Summer Concert on the Beach. There she was, watching her kids playing in the sand, enjoying time with her friends and family as the Pine Mountain Logs took the stage at the Hermosa Pier, in front of an ocean she calls one of the community’s “great resources.”
“It was a very classic Sunday on the beach,” she said.
