Hispanic immigrants targeted by health program

Somos Salud reaches outto Hispanic community
By JENNY HANSELL, The Millerton News, April, 16, 2009

MILLERTON — The organization Somos la Llave del Futuro, Inc.(SLF), based in Millerton and dedicated to building leadership in the immigrant communities of the Hudson Valley and Catskill regions of New York state, has announced a new program involving volunteer community health workers in the Hispanic community of northeastern Dutchess County. This program is called Somos Salud and is funded by the contributions of United Way of Dutchess County, Foundation for Community Health and the Community Foundation of Dutchess County.

Somos Salud is the North East Community Center’s first leadership project and it is a collaboration involving several organizations located in the northeastern Dutchess County area, directed and coordinated by SLF. Somos Salud, or “We are Health,” intends to train a group of community-health promoters who will help direct health-care services to their Hispanic neighbors. By using this network of trusted neighborhood leaders, this person-to-person method will reap benefits far beyond other methods such as printed materials or other media forms in the dispersal of vital information concerning basic services available for them in the region.

A blueprint of this word-of-mouth and mutual trust model was developed by Migrant Health Promotion, an organization that has helped organizations nationwide start or strengthen their own promoters’ programs over the past two decades (migranthealth.org). Following this model, Somos Salud is already organizing and educating a group of 18 promoters, representatives from each of the towns of Amenia, Dover Plains, Pine Plains, Millerton and Millbrook. The promoters in Somos Salud will serve an average of five families apiece, average size being four people, reaching approximately 360 people of the target population.

The initial project phase for which the grant is designed will last for eight months. The promoters are having three hours of monthly training and their curriculum responds to the significant health needs of their neighbors. By following the model of Migrant Health Promotion, the promoters will assess the number of people needing to be served, register or preregister them for services, promote preventive care for such conditions as pregnancy, gynecological care, HIV and TB screening, childhood obesity, dental care, alcoholism, Lyme disease, diabetes and heart disease. They will learn simple medical skills such as glucose and blood pressure measurement, CPR, TB and rapid HIV testing. They will learn how to document what they do.

It is well known in Dutchess County that the Hispanic community is living under the radar. Poverty, lack of transportation, fear concerning immigration status and poor knowledge of the English language are just a few of the barriers these people face in entering mainstream society. These and other factors make it particularly difficult to link available services with this needy population. Therefore, they often rely on very expensive forms of health care, such as local hospital emergency rooms, sometimes waiting until health issues that might have been solved simply and inexpensively, become crises.

Statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau estimated in 2006 that 891 Hispanics lived in the five towns involved in the project. Now, two years later, we can only expect that number has expanded to over 1,000, many of whom are still unaccounted for due to their seasonal and undocumented status. For more information about Somos La Llave del Futuro or Somos Salud, visit somoslallave.org or call 518-789-0397 or Carlos Orellana at 845-558-9477.

Jenny Hansell is the executive director of the North East Community Center.