Clinic brings service directly to farms

KAILUA-KONA — West Hawaii Community Health Center is going mobile in an attempt to reach underserved populations on the Big Island.

WHCHC received a grant from the Change Happens Foundation to bring health care to the people, assuming a specific focus on farm workers and their families who often deal with several barriers to obtaining services.

Jasmin Kiernan, a registered nurse and director of innovation and transformation at WHCHC, said most of the clinic’s patients are uninsured or on Medicaid. Many of them work in agriculture and English is their second language.

“We know we haven’t reached a significant number of (agricultural workers), so our effort is to try to get out there to the farms,” she said. “This is all free service.”

Any farm is eligible to set aside a day for a team from the clinic to come the property and offer checks of vital signs, weight and body measurements, various types of screenings for conditions like diabetes, and health education, among other services.

A nonprofit community health center serving an 80-mile corridor in West Hawaii, WHCHC aims to provide affordable screening and treatment to all patients regardless of economic or immigration status.

But documentation and insurance coverage aren’t the only barriers some part-time and full-time residents of Hawaii Island face when it comes to medical care. Language barriers and transportation issues also keep some people from the help they need.

The WHCHC team visited Greenwell Farms last fall, providing services to 43 employees.

Shanelle Pung, accounting office manager at Greenwell Farms, said both the work the team members did and the way they went about doing it put those treated at ease.

“They brought in translators, which was huge because it gave people comfort explaining in their own language what was wrong with them,” she said. “Some people don’t have cars or anything, and (services) being here, there was just an ease to getting the checkup.”

A survey accompanies the checkups so the clinic can develop a better grasp on the health problems that tend to plague demographics typically represented on Hawaii Island’s farms.

Kiernan said survey questions tend to focus on skin conditions, problems from prolonged exposure to sunlight, interaction with pesticides or contact with an insect, or other organism, that may spread disease.

Socioeconomic factors can also attribute to a higher risk of diabetes or other conditions that become common in all people as they age.

“We really want to get a picture of things they may be exposed to or are prone to because of what they do. They are much more prone to injuries than any other occupation,” Kiernan said. “We hope the survey will give us a better picture of the type of support they need.”

Preventative knowledge may also be lacking among some farmworkers. In those cases, WHCHC community health educators, like Claudia Hartz, step in to offer advice, rounding out the services the clinic provides in its free farm visits.

“If blood pressure is high or they’re at risk for diabetes, then I can step in and offer some healthy lifestyle changes, some tips or give them information on some of our free classes at the clinic,” Hartz said.

Pung said Greenwell Farms plans to take advantage of the service again this year, and every year, as long as funding for the program persists.

“It is a great grant that helps people who are really in need,” she said.

Farms interested in the services should contact Hartz at 326-3889 or 491-9233.