Lowell, Mass., Center Celebrates Health Honorees

Lowell Community Health Center held its “Hidden Hero” awards on Tuesday, August 12, 2008, in recognition of the dedicated work of health care providers.

The ceremony was part of National Health Center Week celebrations, held every second week of August.

This year, the week honored the contributions of health centers that support underserved populations, such as migrants and homeless people.

Dorcas Grigg-Saito, Lowell Community Center’s CEO, said the center has “responded...to the challenges that came with each new wave of immigration. But there’s still a great unmet need and demand for those without health care.”

Lowell’s Mayor Bud Caufield said that “whether by finding a home for a mother with two children, or feeding homeless, with no funfair or spotlights, the heroes we are recognizing today are simply people helping people, day in and out. Those are our true heroes. “

Among the eight workers honored were a pastor, a pharmacy company CEO, and community leaders.

One of the eight honorees, Irene Egan of Visiting Nurse Association of Greater Lowell, said that centers and hospitals should look for new ways of diversifying their staff, so that “we can treat patients with compassion and respect, and in way that’s culturally relevant to them.”

Community health centers are a crucial component in handling health services for undocumented immigrants and uninsured patients.

According to the Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers, a pool of 52 centers takes care of more than 700,000 residents through 184 sites statewide.

For Roberto Laranjo, a guest at the event as well as a pastor of a Lowell-based church that serves Brazilians, all of his Portuguese-speaking church-goers should get involved in the state's healthcare debate about affordable health care.

“A pastor also forms opinion. We can bridge the gap between care providers and the community,” he said with help from a translator.

His wife, Marieta, has been a volunteer at the Lowell center, educating immigrant women about prevention of cervical and breast cancer.

“Sometimes the community doesn’t even know their rights. They are unaware of their options. [Therefore,] their treatment options are drastically limited,” she said.

Marieta also revealed that during recent HIV/AIDS testing of 150 persons, the only positive test results were for those in Lowell's Brazilian community.

Keynote speaker JudyAnn Bigby, MD, the state’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, praised the center’s efforts to reach to immigrant communities in Lowell, but she said much more still needed to be done.

Dr. Bigby highlighted that since health reform was implemented in Massachusetts in 2006 -- followed by 350,000 state residents becoming newly-enrolled in health insurance -- 82 percent of Latinos now report having health insurance.

“While this percentage in Hispanics is still lower than the state’s average, no other state can say they’ve seen such an increase in their [health] coverage for Latinos,” Dr. Bigby said.

One of the biggest barriers to racial minorites, regarding health care, is that they can’t find primary care providers -- which is when community health centers come in, the state Secretary of Health said.

“All the outreach work [that Lowell Community Health Center has] done has paid dividends. If you ever get frustrated, just remember that we are making success and that we have tangible evidence of the difference it’s making in peoples’ lives,” she said.

source: EthnicNEWz.org

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