Madera County Department of Public Health’s Community Resilience Center will bolster county-wide connectivity

In 2024, the Sierra San Joaquin Jobs (S2J2) Initiative selected eight Catalyst Partners to address vital needs of communities across the four-county region of Madera, Fresno, Kings and Tulare. These organizations received funding for projects that will further economic mobility and environmental stewardship, creating transformative change across the region they serve. 

One such project is the Madera County Department of Public Health’s Community Resilience Center which focuses on improving county residents’ overall health. As summers continue to get hotter and last longer, with Madera County experiencing a 3.9 increase in average summer temperature from 1970 to 2025, the center facility will serve as a cooling center that provides air conditioning for county residents. The Madera County Sheriff's Office has always been an outlet for residents to use as a cooling center, but County leadership recognized through community outreach they needed a bigger space with more amenities.

The building is more than a heating and cooling center, though – it also serves as a community hub. “Ultimately, the center will provide a plethora of services that support fundamental necessities including mental health resources and social cohesion,” said Madera County Department of Public Health Program Manager Randip Khangura. “All the offered initiatives will touch on those points and support our families in general.”

The center will support food access by offering nutrition classes and a 5,000-square-foot demonstration garden, where fruits and vegetables can be grown. A commercial kitchen will be included in the center for cooking classes, nutrition education, and for use by startup food-service business and cottage-industry entrepreneurs to prepare their products for sale. Community partners may also utilize the kitchen for caterers to prepare food for large meetings or events. This was identified as a need, since Madera County has limited options for conference spaces. The center will also support community building with a large outdoor space for community members to gather. The indoor space will have a dedicated area for a variety of media projects including podcast production, video editing and band practice and music recordings. The center will be used for emergency sheltering during disaster events and will include sheltering for dogs and cats. The center will also have a children’s playroom, behavioral health outreach and workforce development programming that will focus on green jobs training. Additionally, educational classes will be offered on topics like how to affordably substitute nutritious food, gardening tips and emergency preparedness planning. Madera County Public Health staff plan to work with community members to identify additional classes they want available in the future. 

The inspiration behind the Community Resilience Center came from community feedback from focus groups and planned programming was informed by the Madera County Department of Public Health staff members who attended Fresno State’s Central Valley Health Policy Institute’s 2023-2024 Health Policy Leadership Program: The Climate Change and Public Health Intersections Cohort, where they learned about environmental justice. “We’ve seen health issues in the Central Valley become normalized,” said Madera County Department of Public Health Program Manager Tiara Munoz. “It was brought to the forefront that environmental issues impacting our region can also have unfortunate public health outcomes.” Prior to securing funding for the Community Resilience Center, the department’s staff began to identify Central Valley-specific health concerns including asthma and droughts that needed to be addressed through education and additional resources.

Health care accessibility has been identified as a significant barrier to everyone having an opportunity to attain their highest level of health in Madera County. Madera Community Hospital closed more than three years ago, which created significant gaps in access to care for community members. Although the hospital has since reopened, access to care continues to be limited as services are still being restored and expanded. 

During the COVID pandemic, through the leadership and support of County supervisors and administration, the Madera County Department of Public Health established the “One Stop for Health” outreach and health screening events to make accessing health services easier for demographically diverse residents including Indigenous community members and farmworkers.

Madera County Department of Public Health wanted to ensure that the Community Resilience Center would meet the community’s needs, so they conducted public surveys, focus groups and interviewed rural community members. Six hundred Madera County residents responded to the community resilience survey which is still ongoing. The survey identified a need for more education on the public health effects of environmental events, more awareness of what bad air quality days mean for residents' health and a great interest from youth to share their perspectives. "It was exciting to see how our youth wanted to get involved and were passionate in helping to educate their loved ones," said Health Education Specialist Marilyn Castro.

Being selected as a Catalyst Project, has given the Madera County Department of Public Health the opportunity to broaden its services and better serve its residents. “This partnership has enabled our department to really think about resiliency and where we want to go. It has been great to have that shared space with other Catalyst Partners for collaboration and cross-working” Randip said.

The Madera County Department of Public Health’s Community Resilience Center is slated to open by March 2028. To learn more about this project, visit https://www.maderacounty.com/government/public-health. For more information on the other S2J2 Catalyst Projects, visit www.s2j2initiative.org/catalyst-partners, follow S2J2 on Instagram @s2j2initiaive and subscribe to the newsletter here.