Palacio Podcast
Replay: Dr. Elisa Nicholas of The Children’s Clinic Serves People and Community
May 14, 2018
Doctor Elisa Nicholas, Chief Executive Officer of The Children’s Clinic, has a long, often adventurous, winding story about how she came to Long Beach and the community that she so fiercely serves. It is a story that begins with a father who was the first doctor of Greek immigrants in Los Angeles County who, Nicholas estimates, delivered over ten-thousand babies in his career. Her mother was a surgical nurse.
“My mom always said, ‘When someone is on the [operating] table and they’re draped and you have the sheet that the anesthesiologist has in front of…and they’re open, you can’t tell what their race is, you can’t tell what the color of their skin is’.”
For Elisa Nicholas, her mother’s words “They’re all the same” seems to have guided her life career to serve people from Lebanon to Haiti to Uganda to Long Beach. Doctor Nicholas has headed up The Children’s Clinic for more than 27 years and has earned a national and local reputation as a strong advocate for health care for underserved communities.
Dr. Elisa Nicholas
“Dr. Nicholas has taken what was once a small, mostly volunteer-run clinic serving only children in Long Beach, California to an innovative and progressive system of nine community health centers that provide comprehensive health care services to all ages throughout greater Long Beach, including locations serving unique populations, like the Multi-Service Center for the Homeless.”
PalacioMagazine.com interviewed Doctor Elisa Nicholas at the administrative offices of The Children’s Clinic recently. Nicholas shared an incredible story about determination, persistence, adventure, and selflessness in service to human beings.
A Father’s Encouragement
Doctor Nicholas shared a story about her father seeing, early on, the stubbornness and persistence that would drive her forward. He had wanted to take a picture of her with the Grand Canyon as the backdrop.
“And I refused. And he begged me. And I refused. And he begged me again and I refused and he said, ‘At that moment, he realized that I was different,’ and so he started telling me I had the hands of a surgeon when I was a little kid.”
To Nicholas, her father really began to believe that she could do it. It was a belief shared by her grandmother. This, in spite of the fact, that she found it difficult to get into medical school. Nicholas was rejected by all the schools to which she applied and didn’t even get an interview.
“So, I spent a year really pretty depressed and upset because that’s what I wanted to do.”
Words of encouragement came from her school.
“But, I had one Dean at my college that looked at my transcripts and he was a physician…he said, ‘You can be a doctor if you want to. You’re bright enough to be a doctor. So, you know, just keep trying’.”
This is the part where the stubbornness and persistence of Elisa Nicholas come in. She forged a path from a laboratory to a health clinic in Beaufort, South Carolina. Determined, Nicholas applied again to medical schools and, this time, she was accepted at University of California, Los Angeles.
The Determined Road to Long Beach
Find out more about the Doctor’s long winding road to Long Beach and The Children’s Clinic HERE. Learn more about the important work of the Clinic and Doctor Elisa Nicholas HERE.
The Children’s Clinic Website Biography for Doctor Elisa Nicholas
“For over 26 years, Dr. Nicholas has advocated for health care for the underserved in the local, state and national context as a leader of TCC (The Children’s Clinic). In addition to her role as CEO of TCC, Dr. Nicholas founded and developed several organizations in Southern California that address diverse client issues through improved housing, community health worker interventions, physician training, policy and advocacy work for cleaner air, and better access to health care. As a pediatrician, she continues to advocate for services for the disabled and is designing transitional programs for these individuals. Addressing not only the individual health issues of patients, but also the social determinants of health, Dr. Nicholas’ long-term passionate commitment to helping children and their families to lead healthier and happier lives and experience success has driven pioneering work in the area of chronic diseases, such as asthma, diabetes, obesity, and most recently trauma, toxic stress and adverse childhood events.”
