Zarrow Gift Transfers Legacy Plaza West to OSU Center for Health Sciences and Family and Children's Services

Tuesday, September 11, 2018

Thanks to a generous gift from The Anne & Henry Zarrow Foundation, Family & Children’s Services (F&CS) and Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences (OSU-CHS) are honored to be selected as the recipients of an in-kind, transformative gift of Legacy Plaza West, the largest in a three-building complex on east 31^st Street, formerly Dollar Thrifty’s headquarters.

The Anne & Henry Zarrow Foundation will transfer ownership of eight floors to F&CS and five floors to OSU-CHS, once renovations are complete. This completes the occupancy of Legacy Plaza, the new home to seven nonprofit partner organizations.

“Legacy Plaza is creating an unmatched synergy between our non-profit sector and the residents served by the many valuable services in Tulsa,” Mayor G.T. Bynum said. “I want to thank the Anne and Henry Zarrow Foundation and Legacy Plaza partners for their vision in helping create a strong and resilient community for Tulsa.”

As the largest outpatient community mental health center in Oklahoma, F&CS serves 1 in 6 Tulsans annually though 50 plus life-changing programs in mental health, substance abuse, and child and family services. F&CS heals hurting and abused children, strengthens families and provides hope and a path to recovery for those battling mental illness and addiction.

The gift of eight floors at Legacy Plaza West Tower will enable F&CS to expand services without additional cost to the community. Our current facilities are bursting at the seams while mental health needs are exploding.

F&CS CEO Gail Lapidus said, “One of the highest hopes we have for our new building space and being a part of this campus is that it will spark collaboration and innovation for developing better ways to address the problems in our community.”

The gift of eight floors will enable F&CS to:

Consolidate various community-based and home-based children’s services into a single location to champion the wellbeing of families and children.
Expand psychiatric telephone and mobile crisis services (COPES) and partnership with the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline and first responders.
Establish a centralized children’s mental health treatment facility at our 8th & Peoria location for children who are abused or traumatized and others who are burdened by behavioral health or family problems.
Consolidate and streamline our administrative operations into a single location, as the F&CS’s new headquarters.
Expand local mental health professional workforce through F&CS graduate student internship program.
Increase meeting and conference space to host more parenting classes and professional staff training.

Lapidus said, “We are immensely grateful for the generous gift from the Anne and Henry Zarrow Foundation. Daily headlines make it all too clear that Tulsa's need for mental healthcare continues to grow at a dramatic pace. This unprecedented opportunity will allow us to bolster our capacity through program expansion and innovation. We are thrilled to share a building with our long-time collaborator, OSU Center for Health Sciences. We are eager to explore the possibilities that this proximity will present – to strengthen mental health for everyone in our community.”

OSU-CHS is a leader in Oklahoma for medical education, patient care, and research. Its Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences is the region’s largest academic mental health department dedicated to advancing the understanding and treatment of mental illness and addiction. In November 2017, OSU-CHS established the Center for Wellness & Recovery to improve the lives of Tulsans and Oklahomans affected by pain and substance abuse through treatment, education, research and policy. Through its Project ECHO service lines, OSU-CHS is transforming the delivery of mental health and addiction services in Oklahoma. Project ECHO is a collaborative model of medical education and care management that enables a team of OSU-CHS specialists to transfer specialty knowledge to clinicians in rural and underserved communities who can then provide specialty care to their patients in a local and familiar setting.

The gift of five floors at Legacy Plaza West Tower will enable OSU-CHS to:

Create a central hub for addiction medicine and mental health education, research, and advocacy by consolidating its Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Center for Wellness & Recovery, CIRCA, and Project ECHO into a single, convenient location.
Grow the OSU Center for Wellness & Recovery to be the nation’s preeminent leader in pain and addiction education, treatment, research and policy.
Expand its Project ECHO (Extension for Community Health Care Outcomes) service lines which include Addiction Medicine, Pediatric Behavioral and Emotional Health, and Psychiatry among others.
Promote the research endeavors of the Center for Integrative Research on Childhood Adversity (CIRCA), a program funded by an $11.4 million grant from National Institutes of Health, which is exploring the biological, cognitive, and socioemotional effects of childhood stresson health status.
Collaborate with leading mental health-focused nonprofits at Legacy Plaza including F&CS and Mental Health Association Oklahoma to promote mental health and addiction education, services and public policy recommendations.

“We are enormously grateful to the trustees of The Anne & Henry Zarrow Foundation for this profoundly generous gift, which will help ensure that OSU-CHS continues to be the leader in addressing the state’s shortage of mental health professionals and opioid addiction crisis,” said OSU-CHS President Kayse Shrum, D.O. “The five floors in the Legacy Plaza West Tower will provide a state-of-the-art environment where OSU-CHS physicians and researchers will work side-by-side to advance our understanding of brain diseases that impact the lives of Oklahomans.”

OSU-CHS operates a network of clinics in the Tulsa area offering a multitude of specialty services including cardiology, family medicine, internal medicine, pediatrics, psychiatry and behavioral health, and women’s health. In addition to the establishment of the OSU Center for Wellness & Recovery, OSU-CHS operates a Behavioral Medicine Clinic in south Tulsa serving children and adults. In the spring of 2018, OSU-CHS received accreditation for two addiction medicine fellows who will treat substance abuse patients at a newly opened Addiction Medicine Clinic.

Thanks to this generous gift from The Anne & Henry Zarrow Foundation, F&CS and OSU-CHS will solidify themselves as the leaders in behavioral healthcare education, research and treatment in the region, thus ensuring high-quality behavioral health support for generations to come.