We recently spoke with Dr. Oswaldo A. Grenardo about his upcoming partnership with CAA Health to provide free medical services to the community in the Center’s newly renovated medical consult space, starting June 17, 2025. Dr. Grenardo’s relationship with CAA Health stretches over two decades as a board member and thought partner. In his work, Dr. Grenardo continues to be a strong advocate for access to health services for Black and other communities without unnecessary impediments to critical care. Dr. Grenardo practices as a family medicine physician and has served in management and governance positions in various medical groups around Metro Denver.
When did you first become involved with CAA Health?
That was probably around 1999 or 2000 when I was doing work for the State Health Department as a consultant, and I think it was the Denver Metro Black Church initiatives that at that time had applied for one of their first grants and was given to them by the Department of Health, and so I worked with Lucille Johnson on that project and that was my first foray into the work that they do.
How have you seen CAA’s growth during the time you’ve been associated with it?
Oh yes! From having very focused initiatives around the work that Black churches were doing at the time to then shifting their focus to say, ‘look, we should take care of all of Black health in Denver’, and then to Colorado Springs and around the state, and then to say how we can serve people better – not just in terms in programs – but can we have a building that will serve as an anchor, that progress and growth over the last twenty-five years has really been incredible; and visionaries from Grant Jones to Deidre Johnson, to have them drive forward on that path is just great to see.
How did the partnership with CAA Health come to be? What was the main impetus for wanting to provide free medical services?
My dad passed away last year in April from lung cancer. Unfortunately, it was a quick illness and process that he went through. During the pandemic, he didn’t trust anyone with medical care; and I talked to him about how he needed a COVID shot. I gave him some information on a couple of different places and he chose to go to the Center (CAA Health), and I loved it because he loved going there, he trusted everyone, because of who they were and what they represented, and his familiarity with them led him to go back a few times for immunizations, and to me, that was reinforcement of the work they had done for many years in the community; truly being a trusted member of the community, especially around health issues. When I was making my transition out of administrative work in health care, it was really my goal to do something that I thought would be hopefully impactful and meaningful to me, and so that’s when I thought about how I could give back to our community by providing care at one of those partner facilities like the Center, and I was just happy that Deidre and the team were really excited and interested in doing something like this.
What kinds of medical services will be available for people accessing them?
I’d like to do it every Tuesday night, maybe starting around 5 pm or 6 pm, and do it as long as we can until we see the last patient who comes in. It’ll probably be acute care services, primary services, to start off with. So if people have colds, if people have illnesses that they want to get seen for or haven’t had a chance to see a doctor, hopefully those hours would be good for them to come in. As a Family Medicine doctor, I can see anyone in the family and provide care for them, whether they are infants, newborns on through to the elderly. And then, at some point, as people might need medication refills or can’t get in to see their primary care doctor, they may want to switch their primary care to our office. We’ll get into more complex care for patients, I hope, as time goes on. But, as of right now, if you need something acutely or urgently, hopefully we’ll be able to provide some care for people.
In your work, is lack of medical access and services or having “health equity” still a primary issue in Black and other color communities in 2025?
Oh my gosh! Yes! Every week I get a list of articles that come out in major journals as well as in publications around the US that are just medical-based. When I get this email list every day, there is at least one article on health equity or the issues people are dealing with health disparities. And especially for racial and ethnic minorities, we typically see that Black patients, most of the time, have the worst outcomes. And, unsurprisingly and terribly, Black women have it even worse. When I see that, there are issues with the ideologies of why that’s happening, and why it’s going on, and certainly we need to help that situation. I want to make sure I’m doing what I can from a healthcare perspective, from an access perspective – and services will be free, so we want to make sure that people have the ability to see a doctor that they trust without some of the incumbrances or some of the issues that would prevent them from seeing a doctor. What I would love to see is after patient care, is that we ask people what else they need: ‘Do you need rides to care?’ ‘Do you need daycare while you see a doctor?’ We need to start to give out those other social determinants to health to get the most out of people’s ability to access care and then hopefully those numbers turn in the right way.