Ebullient leader of Glendale Healthy Kids to step down

The executive director of a nonprofit set up to serve uninsured children in Glendale is stepping down to take the helm of a domestic violence shelter in Arizona.

Camille Levee — who as the exuberant executive director of Glendale Healthy Kids has become a fixture in the local nonprofit community for the past 5 1/2 years — announced her resignation to the board of directors Thursday morning.

She plans to move in May after shepherding through a round of key fundraisers for the nonprofit that has become synonymous with her name.

Levee will assume the executive director position for Time Out Inc., an emergency and transitional shelter for domestic violence victims in Payson, Ariz.

In her letter to the board, Levee said the time was ripe for transition.

“In every organization comes a time when even the most dynamic organization can benefit from new leadership and vision,” she wrote. “I have decided that now is the time for Glendale Healthy Kids.”

In 1993, the Glendale Memorial Hospital Foundation formed a committee to determine the health needs of “underprovided” children and discovered that uninsured children lacked the sort of health care that could prevent more serious medical conditions later on.

The study found that local emergency rooms and school nurses were providing primary care to children that could otherwise be fulfilled by some other means. And so roughly 18 years ago, Glendale Memorial Hospital, Verdugo Hills Hospital, Glendale Adventist Medical Center, Glendale Unified and the city of Glendale formed Glendale Healthy Kids.

The organization has since grown into a mainstay in Glendale, supported in part by a steady round of annual fundraisers and deep well of active board members.

Through its so-called “virtual clinic,” the nonprofit has provided hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of services each year to uninsured and “under-insured” children, and has kept an annual average of 35 kids out of emergency rooms, according to an op-ed penned by Levee last year.

-- Jason Wells, Times Community News

Twitter: @JasonBretWells