When Jill Daniels started her career at the Multnomah County Health Department — a career that would last for 24 years — she had just given birth to her first daughter. The last thing she imagined was that her daughter would follow in her footsteps and land at the Multnomah County Health Department.
And yet, that’s exactly what happened, and Jill could not be more delighted that her daughter, Adrienne Daniels, chose to make a career out of advancing public health with the same organization she worked at for more than two decades.
While thousands of employees have moved in and out of the Health Department over the years, the story of the Danieles offers a glimpse into the unique bond that family members who work at Multnomah County share with each other, the organization and their work.
Keep reading to learn more about several people with family connections: Jill and Adrienne Daniels, Nomika Gibson and Anitra Lambert.
‘When you work for the Health Department, your work does matter’
Jill, who still lives in Portland, started at Multnomah County in 1986 after responding to a small notice in The Oregonian looking for people to sit on the Community Health Council. At the time, Daniels was working as an intensive care unit (ICU) nurse.
“When I graduated from nursing school, I had this vision of where I would spend my career, which was going to be in an ICU, and all the fame and fortune that comes with that,” Daniels said.
After a couple years of working in that role, Daniels realized that she could do more fulfilling work if she focused on an upstream approach to address root causes rather than symptoms in a person’s health.
“Working in the ICUs showed me how messed up people’s bodies were at that point and I couldn’t get away from the notion that much of what I was seeing could be preventable,” said Daniels. “The idea of investing upstream and investing not just in health when it comes to your body, but also health as a society — where people live, what education they get, what access to resources do they have — the environmental impact was critically important to me.”
However, she did not have much public health experience and decided to get her master’s degree in adolescent health.
Daniels ended up serving on the Community Health Council for four years. In 1990, she became an on-call nurse for the County’s school-based health centers (now known as Student Health Centers), which were just taking off at the time. Eventually, Daniels advanced to become the manager of the school-based health center program in 2007 until she retired in 2014.
“I think what kept me at the Health Department was the amazing mentorship that I had from the early days of school-based health centers,” said Daniels. “The leadership at the time had unbelievable faith in the idea of school-based health and really supported it and helped it to grow over many years.”
Daniels’ daughter, Adrienne, was born shortly after Jill started at the County.
Adrienne grew up helping her mom count health brochures for school clinics when she and her sister did not have summer camp. Oftentimes, she was a proxy pilot audience for videos that her mom would use as part of the curriculum she would show students at the clinics. Every Easter afternoon, the girls would refill their plastic eggs with most of their candy and go to Jill’s office at the McCoy Building to re-hide the eggs around the offices. Employees returned to work on Monday morning to happily discover a plethora of candy-filled Easter eggs and Peeps.
Fast forward to 2016. Like her mother, Adrienne found herself working in public health, but as a consultant for a large firm whose clients were trying to expand their Medicaid populations after the Supreme Court decided to keep Medicaid expansion intact in the Affordable Care Act.
“During that time, I was constantly flying. I was not living in the community that I was working in. I was really tired of not simply sleeping in my own bed at night,” said Adrienne Daniels. “And so I was starting to look for jobs and roles that would let me keep doing public health clinical policy work at home.”
Adrienne ended up finding a job posting for the Deputy Director for Integrated Clinical Services (ICS) position at Multnomah County. The job checked Adrienne’s boxes for public policy work that was centered around clinical health. However, she was unsure of what the environment of working at the County would look like.
“I sent an email to my mom with the job description and she laughed because it reported to her former boss [former ICS director Vanetta Abdellatif]. She told me it would be a tough, but good, job,” said Adrienne Daniels.
“Vanetta probably was one of my best mentors,” Jill Daniels said. “She was a wonderful role model as well to really fight for what you believe in, so I knew Adrienne would be in good hands.”
Jill’s admiration for Abdellatif was a determining factor in Adrienne’s desire for the job and decision to apply. Adrienne began serving as the ICS deputy director in 2016. In 2021, Adrienne was appointed as the interim director of ICS, a position she served in for 18 months, only recently returning to her regular deputy director role.
One of Adrienne’s most impactful contributions since joining the County has been her work in strategizing access to COVID-19 vaccinations, particularly for including Hispanic, Black, and American Indian or Alaska Native community members. Thanks to their significant efforts, more than 70% of County health center clients received the full vaccination series.
Adrienne also led the effort to partner with Portland Community College to develop a new clinic that will expand health center services in the Cully neighborhood and create a new workforce and career training pathways for dental assistants and pharmacy technicians.
Adrienne’s last major projects as the ICS interim director was the launch of a new mobile health clinic with more than eight community partners that will start seeing patients this June and the acquisition of the Rockwood Health Center building from CareOregon to continue providing primary care, dental and pharmacy services.
Outside of expanding ICS’s impact on the community, Adrienne has also continued the annual Easter tradition with her daughter, passing the memories of being a part of the County Health Department family to another generation.
While Jill and Adrienne never worked together, both mother and daughter speak of how meaningful it feels to dedicate themselves to improving the health of the community they live in by working for Multnomah County.
“When you work for the Health Department, your work does matter. I know it’s sort of a slogan right now, but your work really does matter: from the physician who’s seeing people day in and day out in their office to the outreach worker who’s in the streets, looking for the person who needs healthcare,” said Jill Daniels.
“We have an impact in our community and there’s a real opportunity to make our community healthier and safer.”
“I come from a mixed-race, multi-generational household. When my grandmother first stepped foot in Oregon, she couldn’t get married, she couldn’t buy a house,” said Adrienne Daniels during an April 27, 2023 Board of County Commissioners meeting during which she was recognized for her work as interim director. “And to think two generations later, my family now steps into government and can lead means the world to me.
“Having this connection with my mom to the legacy of the County’s Community Health Center makes my work even more meaningful - and it's also led to some great family traditions decades later.”
Indeed, Anitra Lambert and Nomika Gibson further show how such family career traditions run deep in the Health Department.
Commitment to making a difference. Dedication to community. Pride in the workplace. Respect. Anitra Lambert and Nomika Gibson are testament to prideful longevity of 33 years combined working for Multnomah County Health Department.
Their collective Health Department histories span three generations of family careers: four women, 93 years, and countless inspiring examples of finding fulfillment and professional mission through community-driven work and giving back.
The County Baby: 'Other places don’t treat you like the Health Department’
Nomika Gibson is a self-proclaimed County baby.
Her mom started with the Health Department in 1980, moved to the Women, Infants, and Children program (WIC) program in 1985, where she proceeded to work for 25 years stationed at Northeast Health Center. She then transitioned to working on-call for the WIC program until the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020.
“I used to call myself a ‘County Baby,’” Gibson said, referring to medical care she received as an infant from Wilma Smith, a County pediatrician, and the years she spent as a youth visiting Northeast Health Center, where her mom worked.
“I was always there with my friends. I always admired my mom’s work,” Gibson said.
Her admiration for her mom and childhood healthcare provider has shown up in Gibson’s County career path. Gibson currently works at the Patient Access Center, where she is busy taking incoming calls for Patient Access Center, scheduling primary care and new patients for dental appointments for all County clinics, and routing messages to clinics.
“I am back to where I kind of started, in the call center, and I love it here. I love to help the patients.’’
Following in her mother’s footsteps, Gibson began her tenure at the County in 1996 in an on-call position with the WIC program. She spent several years at the Southeast Health Center and Northeast Health Center front desks before moving downtown in 2004 to the McCoy Building appointment center, where she worked from 2004 to 2012. During these years she was an Office Assistant 2, Senior Office Assistant and an Information Referral Specialist.
Gibson then left the County to work out of state for eight years.
“I left because I thought the grass would be greener on the other side, but came back to find out that other places don’t treat you like the Health Department,” said Gibson. “We have a lot of things that other places don’t offer.’’
Since returning to Multnomah County in May 2022, Gibson has worked as an Office Assistant 2 for the Patient Access Center.
“I am back to where I kind of started, in the call center, and I love it here. I love to help the patients.’’
“Unions are not everywhere; not every big company has a union,’’ Gibson added. “Unions are not everywhere; not every big company has a union,’’ Gibson added. “I thought, everywhere I go, everybody’s going to be like Multnomah County. No. I like being here and I think I have some years left.”
Even as a County grownup.
The WIC Lady: Anitra Lambert, County-committed office assistant
Anitra Lambert is an Office Assistant 2 for the Healthy Homes and Communities program and Environmental Health Inspections. But she is known in the community as “the WIC Lady.”
“For me, it’s people,’’ Lambert said of her affection for WIC, which stands for the Women, Infants, and Children program. “In all of my jobs, I've always been in some type of customer service role.’’
WIC promotes the nutritional health of low-income women, infants and children.
“I just like interacting with people — smiling and talking with people, and hearing their stories. Even the angry ones, because sometimes they just need someone to listen,” Lambert said. “That’s pretty much why I'm still here. It doesn't hurt to be paid, either.”
The seeds of her County work journey were planted by her late maternal grandmother, Ella J Dockery, who Lambert remembers being employed with the Health Department for about 20 years.
“Growing up, I would see what grandma was doing at WIC and I was curious about giving away WIC checks to people,” Lambert said. “Don't ask me why, sometimes you just have this thing in your head and I was curious about giving away WIC checks.”
But Lambert got her real start at the County through her friendship with Nomika Gibson — both same-year Jefferson High School graduates. (Yes, we know: Go Demos!)
“Nomika’s mom recommended me to WIC because she was retiring soon,” Lambert said.
“I really didn’t want to do the (WIC) call center, but I had kids to raise. I applied for WIC and was told I would get only eight hours on-call. I thought: I’m going to step out on faith and take the eight hours.’’
She turned down a full-time offer at a call center elsewhere for the eight-hour per week on-call position with the WIC program at the Northeast, East County and Gateway Health Center.
Soon after, Lambert landed a full-time position.
“I took my chances with the Health Department with WIC, and I ended up getting 40 hours a week,’’ Lambert said. “They liked me.”
That was 2007. Sixteen years later, even in a different role, Lambert still sees many of her former WIC clients.
“To this day, they call me the WIC lady: ‘Hey, there’s the WIC lady!’” she said. “One lady even named her baby after my daughter, which was cool.”
Lambert said she remains with the County because she has grown professionally working in many departments and divisions.
“I can go to another department without losing my benefits, without losing my union membership,’’ she said. “My mother said, ‘Always stay with a job that has a union.’ I’m not trying to give that up, or my PERS.’’
Good advice from the WIC Lady.