As a young pharmacy student, Christopher Woodring learned how Trillium Health approached its patients. Namely, he saw how the health care system, initially founded to treat those with HIV and AIDS in the 1980s, specialized its care based on needs. That appealed to Woodring.
He took a job at Trillium in 2008. Seventeen years — and one recent promotion to vice president and chief pharmacy officer — later, he sees how doling out prescriptions is just one element of the larger patchwork of care.
“We talk to a patient, and they don’t have a fridge, so they’re not taking their insulin,” Woodring said. “We talk to a patient, and they say, ‘I don’t have any food for the weekend.’ What other pharmacy walks out to the food pantry and grabs a bag of food for them to take home for the weekend?”
This continued holistic care has led Trillium Health into its latest era, five years out from the defining health issue in a generation: the COVID-19 pandemic. Another recent appointment bears this out. Dr. Michael Mendoza, former Monroe County health commissioner during the pandemic, recently joined as senior vice president and chief operating officer.
Now, as when Trillium started up its clinics during the AIDS crisis, the focus remains on community. The system continues to grow, serving patients in two main Rochester facilities with three satellite locations and providing resources as varied as gynecology, diabetes management, sexual health, transgender care, financial assistance, food and housing aid and more.
So, too, have the definitions and functions of health care grown. When Dr. Mendoza began practicing in the late 1990s, he said, the implicit basis of care was strictly medical, i.e. not related to related issues of food or transportation access. The importance of those factors has since shifted.
“Whether you consider them medical or not, they’re definitely important to health,” Mendoza said. “We’re in this transition where we’re thinking more broadly about health care and thinking just generally about health.”
Part of his new role is shepherding Trillium’s evolution into a Federally Qualified Health Center, a designation that comes with $3 million annually in government aid. The funds will allow Trillium to open a new facility on Jefferson Avenue sometime in the summer and add more primary care options at its existing Science Parkway location.
Bolstering health care in a post-COVID-19 world makes sense given what the pandemic revealed about the strength of the systems in place. For Mendoza, the necessary and fast adoption of telemedicine during that time was a blessing.
“It’s become a vehicle for us to improve our ways of being accessible to communities that have traditionally not been included,” he said. “We’ve learned that telemedicine has made mental health care more accessible for certain populations.”
Woodring said pharmaceutical care during the pandemic improved as well, citing medication home delivery and filling prescriptions in larger quantities.
“Patients were leaving the building without having to come back for months,” he said.
Along those lines, the new horizon of Trillium includes continued community outreach in ways that transcend the medical. The most conspicuous is its sponsorship of Rochester Pride in July, via the ROC Pride Collective, and its popular White Party fundraising gala.
On Feb. 13, Trillium will present a unique outing: a classical music concert at Eastman Theatre’s Kodak Hall that’s also a drag show. Led by violinist and “RuPaul’s Drag Race” talent Thorgy Thor, the event is co-hosted with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra and features the Rochester Gay Men’s Chorus as well as local drag favorite Mrs. Kasha Davis as a guest tenor.
Thor, a graduate of SUNY Purchase’s Conservatory of Music, is a string dynamo, fluent in violin, viola and cello — all instruments on display during the program titled “Thorgy Thor & The Thorchestra.” The performer calls it a musical variety show. She premiered it in 2018 in Halifax, Nova Scotia with conductor Daniel Bartholomew-Poyser; since then, Thor has shared the stage with symphonies in Pittsburgh, San Francisco, Boston and more.
The idea is simple: Bring classical fans to a drag show and drag fans to the orchestra.
“I want to see all the drag lovers come back and buy a ticket to the symphony, even though I’m not here, and come enjoy a 44-minute Tchaikovsky symphony and vice versa,” Thor said. “I want to see some of the older orchestra lovers at the drag club at midnight on a Tuesday for your local performers.”
The Thorchestra is perhaps the only show where Brahms’s “Hungarian Dance No. 1” is immediately followed by a Village People disco tune. The novelty of seeing both executed at the highest level is what helps fund patients’ needs at Trillium. After all, Thorgy’s show is a fundraiser — and another way to help keep care continuous.
Thorgy Thor & The Thorchestra, co-hosted by Trillium Health and the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, comes to Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre on Feb. 13. Tickets and more information available here.
Patrick Hosken is an arts reporter for CITY. He can be reached at patrick@rochester-citynews.com.
This article appears in Dec 1-31, 2024.
