Peoples' Self-Help Housing

Bilingual nurse bridges language gap

12/28/04| By June Rich| News-Press Correspondent

Nurse Alicia Morales Jacobson conducts one of her free office visits

When Rosa Rosales suspected her pregnancy wasn't going well, she went to the emergency room. The 33-year-old homemaker was treated on several visits for her symptoms—severe nausea and vomiting—but Mrs. Rosales didn't have the language skills or health insurance to press for more care.

It took an intervention from the nurse at her housing complex to get someone to investigate her condition and conduct the surgery she needed to treat the nonviable pregnancy.

Mrs. Rosales, a resident of the Carpinteria Camper Park, was distraught about her loss, but she was extremely grateful for the nurse's assistance.

"It was a great relief, a great help," Mrs. Rosales said through a translator. "I had been out of work because I wasn't functioning."

The nurse, Alicia Morales Jacobson, is involved with a program run by Peoples' Self-Help Housing at two of its sites, the Camper Park and Dahlia Court, both in Carpinteria.

Ms. Morales Jacobson, a bilingual parish nurse with Cottage Congregational Healthcare, visits each site for three hours per week, screening people for health problems, directing them to health resources off-site and educating them about their rights to financial assistance when appropriate.

In the case of Mrs. Rosales, it was a matter of getting signed up for emergency MediCal.

Though that was an urgent situation, much of what Ms. Morales Jacobson does is about keeping people out of the emergency room.

That involves a lot of screenings for treatable conditions, such as high blood pressure and diabetes, before they get out of control.

"A lot of the issues encountered here get people into the health care system," the 43-year-old nurse said. "They learn that there's (a health care system) to get into beyond going to the emergency room."

Ms. Morales Jacobson conducts her office visits, which are free, out of the mailroom at the Camper Park because there is no official medical facility there yet.

She does her best to meet the needs of the 600 residents there and at Dahlia Court, and her educational forums usually are packed.

Recently, the nurse learned of some available flu vaccines and conducted an impromptu clinic, vaccinating 67 people.

A prostate cancer discussion for men a few weeks back was standing-room only, despite the fact that, when asked for a show of hands, none of the men in attendance knew what prostate cancer was. Attendees broached all kinds of cancer questions after the talk because they were desperate to speak with someone knowledgeable and bilingual.

And a few months ago, when Mrs. Morales Jacobson announced a three-mile exercise walk, at least 30 women showed up to take her up on the challenge.

That proved to be another occasion for education, when one of the women, Virginia Valenzuela, 59, nearly passed out from a rapid change in blood sugar. Mrs. Valenzuela suffered from inadequately treated diabetes.

"I had to run back to my car for my things and stabilize her," Ms. Morales Jacobson said. "She hadn't eaten. We talked about how you can't go all day without eating and then go walk that far."

Mrs. Valenzuela said she has changed her ways. "I'm going to eat better now," she said. "I'm eating more."

The parish nurse program at Peoples' Self-Help needs donations to continue, at a cost of around $75,000 per year, or expand its hours. The organization would like to build a full-fledged clinic facility at the Camper Park like it has at Dahlia Court, and at Los Adobes de Maria, its farm-worker complex in Santa Maria.

A new project, Rio Vista, in Guadalupe will have a doctor's office and three exam rooms.

Peoples' Self-Help Executive Director Jeanette Duncan said the foray into health care started "because we realized that even if we built a brand new housing development, people coming into it all suffered from health problems because they had lived in such bad conditions previously."

Mrs. Morales Jacobson said her work saves the community money by avoiding expensive emergency room visits, but it also ensures a higher quality of life for her clients.

"We try to take care of the whole person," she said of Peoples' Self-Help. "Not just give them a roof over their head."