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Primary Care, Wellness
"It is health that is real wealth and not pieces of gold or silver.”
Mahatma Gandhi
The Primary Care, Wellness and Preventative Care Community Team meets on the Second Thursday of each month from 2-3 pm via Zoom. This team has been focused on promoting healthy relationships and reducing sexually transmitted infections among young adults by promoting sexual education in schools, and is supporting Planned Parenthood's Get Real Teen Council which will kick off in the Spring of 2022. The Community Team is also working to provide training for Community Health Workers, and will be conducting research on how CHWs can help to reduce non-emergency visits to Emergency Departments in Hampden County hospitals. Please contact Becky Basch at bbasch@pvpc.org if you are interested in joining this Community Team.
Strategy Implementation
Strategy Implementation
The Get Real Teen Council
The Get Real Teen Council
One of the first goals that the Community Team discussed was to bring back evidence-based sexual education to Hampden County schools. Currently Sex Ed is not required at any schools in Massachusetts.
The Get Real Teen Council involves training high school students to work with their peers in an after-school program focused on healthy relationships.The Get Real Teen Council will be conducted in Springfield at schools that are currently offering the Get Real Sex Ed curriculum.
For more information, please contact Sasha Jimenez at sjimenez@pplm.org.
Youth Participatory Access
Research Project
Faculty from the School of Public Health and Health Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst received HCHIP funding to conduct a Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) project in collaboration with New England Public Media (NEPM) and Gandara Center in summer 2021.
YPAR provides youth with the opportunity to study social problems affecting their lives and to determine actions to solve these problems. The seven-week Summer Media Lab, hosted in partnership with NEPM, occurred in July - August 2021. A diverse group of 15 young people ages 14-21 were recruited from the Springfield Metropolitan area to participate.
Five participants from this project will continue to participate in a youth advisory council for the STRIVE Study, where they will engage in group research and analysis; and use their findings to take action in their communities at the local, regional and state legislative level.
YPAR provides youth with the opportunity to study social problems affecting their lives and to determine actions to solve these problems. The seven-week Summer Media Lab, hosted in partnership with NEPM, occurred in July - August 2021. A diverse group of 15 young people ages 14-21 were recruited from the Springfield Metropolitan area to participate.
Five participants from this project will continue to participate in a youth advisory council for the STRIVE Study, where they will engage in group research and analysis; and use their findings to take action in their communities at the local, regional and state legislative level.
Supporting Employment and Training for CHWs
Community Health Workers work in many sectors of health care and social health services. Community Health Workers (or CHWs) may have a number of job titles including health navigators, outreach workers, peer health educators, community liaisons, and recovery coaches, etc.
Brenda Evans, Community Research Liaison CHW ally in the Center for Community Health Equity Research in the School of Public Health & Health Sciences, UMass Amherst, coordinates monthly networking meetings of CHWs in the Springfield and Holyoke to offer trainings and a place for discussion about issues that CHWs are facing. She offers guidance for CHWs to apply for certification and provides information on trainings and policy.
For more information on trainings for CHWs, contact Brenda D Evans, MPH at bdevans@umass.edu.
Preventative vs. Emergent Care
Preventative vs. Emergent Care
High rates of obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, asthma, and associated morbidities continue to affect Hampden County residents. An estimated 30% of adults in the population are obese, with high rates also observed among children. Heart disease is the leading cause of death in Hampden County. One third of Hampden County adults have hypertension, a risk factor for cardiovascular disease, with rates increasing in older adults to an estimated 55%. Approximately 20% of the population has pre-diabetes or diabetes, and 12% of adults and 19% of school children have asthma. Asthma morbidity rates were particularly high among Latinos. High rates of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and teen pregnancy continue to occur, and unsafe sexual behavior contributes to these statistics.
Some conditions, such as asthma and diabetes can be managed with medication and preventative care. ER visits and hospitalizations often occur as a result of extreme circumstances, which may be due to a lack of either medicine or preventative care. Many visits to the ER are also considered “non-emergent” or avoidable, and may be due to long wait times at urgent care clinics or a shortage of primary care providers. In Hampden County 54% of residents live in a health care professional shortage area (vs 14.6% in MA); this particularly affects those living in Springfield, Holyoke, West Springfield, Westfield, Chester and Blandford. The shortage of medical professionals itself can lead to long wait times for appointments and needed care.
In the development of the Hampden CHIP, hospital focus groups identified several barriers to preventative and on-going wellness care. These include the need for increased health literacy among patients, increased provider sensitivity towards different cultures, and health information available in a wider range of languages.
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