By Rob Waters, California Health Care Foundation, August 17, 2021
When the coronavirus pandemic struck California in March 2020, community health workers at a group of school-based family resource centers in Chula Vista made a pivot. The schools where they worked closed abruptly, and it was no longer safe to meet clients in person. They started working the phones, reaching out to families to find out what they needed. As it turned out, they needed a lot.
“They are desperate. They don’t have money to pay rent, to get food, or diapers for their children,” Aida Meza, a promotor de salud, or health worker, with the Chula Vista Community Collaborative, said in a June 2020 interview. “The first month, it was really crazy. They didn’t know where to go, what to do.”
She and her colleagues made wellness calls. “We made appointments to help them apply for services, to get food distributed, to get free testing for COVID,” said promotor Azucena Lopez de Nava, who works with Meza.
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