When you struggle with health issues, sometimes it’s easier to talk to a friend you trust than to a doctor you don’t know. Someone who is approachable and speaks your language. That’s the principle behind Puente’s new Community Health Workers / Promotoras de Salud Project, which recently secured funding to train and hire community members to visit farms, ranches, and all people in need on the South Coast. The Promotoras (three bilingual, two Spanish-only speakers) will talk to people about their health – and discuss the importance of preventive services and seeing a doctor regularly. They will play a key role in helping funnel more local patients into the recently opened health clinic housed in Puente’s offices. “The Promotoras don’t have as much medical knowledge, but they do have community knowledge. They will act as the bridge between the community and the medical clinic,” says Molly Wolfes, Community Health Coordinator for Puente. Puente’s pop-up medical clinic, a satellite of San Mateo Medical Center’s Coastside Clinic in Half Moon Bay, opened in March. Since then, the county doctors who staff the clinic have seen 99 patients. Nearly 80 percent are low-income farm workers and their families. The clinic represents the latest attempt to address the serious lack of health services available to several under-served and under-insured communities on the South Coast. As many … Continue reading Puente community health workers connect locals to doctors and other preventive services