Clyde W. Oden
President and CEO
Watts Health Foundation
A pastor and holder of four graduate degrees in business, public health, divinity and optometry, Clyde Oden has steered a steady path for the “community empowerment enterprise” he joined as an administrator in 1967, rising to the top position within 10 years.
“We seek to assist the various communities that we serve in taking control of their destinies in the area of economics, health care and social services,” he said. “We believe we are a national leader in this concept of community empowerment.”
Founded in the wake of the 1965 Watts riots, Inglewood-based Watts Health Foundation serves more than 200,000 people through two federally qualified health centers, 44 community health programs and the 140,000-member UHP Healthcare HMO.
Watts Health Systems is a non-profit health care organization that provides services to families in L.A., Orange and San Bernardino counties. It is the parent organization for a number of health services, including UHP, a federally qualified HMO; an inpatient and outpatient substance abuse program; a health education center and a school-based health clinic.
Programs are provided on a fee-for-service basis. For those who can’t pay, funding is provided through county, state and federal grants.
“I came to Watts Health out of a sense of mission,” said Oden. “I wanted to make a difference in a community devastated by the civil unrest of 1965.”
Since then, Oden and his team have expanded the geographic coverage of the HMO; started a low-cost school-based health clinic at Jordan High School in Watts that is open to every student, and free to those with no third-party coverage; and acquired Family Savings Bank in 1995.
Oden said one of his proudest achievements has been establishing “the largest fleet of mobile medical centers in California, if not the entire country,” he said. These provide subsidized or low-cost medical services to underserved populations.
“One-third of the population of Los Angeles County is uninsured or lives at or beneath the poverty level, and a significant number are ill-housed,” Oden noted. “This is a travesty. I feel an obligation to do something about it, by making services and opportunities available to these populations in whatever creative ways we can.”
