(Forbes) - Walking into OLE Health, on Pear Tree Lane in Napa, two questions immediately came to mind.

First, why is this community health center nicer than my private doctor’s office?

And second, what does this health center have to teach me about wine in Napa?

More than I could have imagined, it turns out. The staff and patients at OLE Health reflect not only the demographics of Napa Valley but also their priorities and concerns when it comes to pivotal issues for the people who actually grow the grapes and make the wine in the bottle from Napa that’s sitting on your table.

One of those issues is healthcare reform, and its impact is seen hundreds of times a day at OLE Health and its satellite clinics throughout Napa Valley. OLE Health is the only federally qualified health center in Napa County; Sonoma County, by comparison, has nine. How it operates, and its effect on the families and labor force here, is the subject of this first post of our series on seeing Napa through the lens of a wine glass.

Each post in the series ends with wine recommendations that illustrate the topic of the day. But first, some history.

History 

Tanir Ami, OLE Health’s CEO, explained that the origins of the facility she oversees — like many similar community health centers around the country — is rooted in the civil rights movement of more than 40 years ago, when activists who led voter registration drives in the southern U.S. discovered the lack of access to basic health care within impoverished communities. By the early 1970s, a network of community health centers had opened as an after-effect of that discovery, and one of the new centers was in Healdsburg, in northern Sonoma County. A group of local farmworkers in Napa realized their community needed one too.

In its original iteration, and for the first 20 years of its existence, OLE Health was run entirely by volunteers out of La Luna Market & Taqueria on Rutherford Road. It focused almost exclusively on farmworkers and their families, and providing immunizations was their most common service.

When labor leader and civil rights activists Cesar Chavez came to Napa, also in the early 1970s, he advocated for the unionization of farmworkers. One of that group’s major concerns was access to healthcare, a concern that began a long-term commitment by vintners to provide healthcare for their workers.

Philanthropy and Impact 

The Napa Valley Vintners, a nonprofit trade organization of more than 500 members, distributes grants to local partners from their annual Auction Napa Valley proceeds. Community health and children’s education are their top priorities. OLE Health, along with two local hospitals, are the largest grantees within the Community Health category.