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Healthcare Heroes

Personal Trainer and Owner, Movement for All

She Inspires Others to Improve Their Mobility — and Quality of Life

Cindy Senk

One of Cindy Senk’s first experiences with yoga wasn’t a positive one.

Her back was very painful on the right side. “The yoga teacher came up in my face and said, ‘you can do better, you can do better’” — but not in an encouraging way, she recalled.

“It was almost hostile — this in-my-face attitude,” she went on. “I was really taken aback by that. I felt like, you don’t know me; you don’t know my health history; you don’t know what I’m feeling. I wanted to say, ‘get out of my face,’ but I didn’t — I just stepped back, and I never went back to that yoga studio.”

The experience drove her when she launched her own fitness and training practice, Movement for All, 20 years ago.

“I decided I would never be that teacher. I would never put someone in that particular place,” Senk told BusinessWest. “My philosophy as a teacher is to educate and empower my students, my clients, to make the choices that feel right because they feel it in their body. They know how they feel.”

That philosophy has led her not only to success with Movement for All, but 40 years of successes with specific populations, like people with arthritis, older individuals, and clients with cognitive challenges — because she understands that everyone, no matter their challenges, can thrive when they’re not treated in a cookie-cutter way.

Kelly Gilmore understands this. One of three clients who nominated Senk as a Healthcare Hero, Gilmore, a department chair at West Springfield High School, was hospitalized with a condition that diminished her mobility, stamina, and overall physical and mental state so severely that she couldn’t return to her teaching position.

“None of the numerous medical specialists that I continued to see regularly could offer a path toward improvement, beyond pain relief,” she wrote. “I set out to find a healthcare/fitness professional that was committed to helping me restore my health, strength, and mobility. Cindy offered exactly that. She met me where I was and created a personalized plan to move me to where I needed to be. She empowered me to take charge of my healing, unlocking the power inside of me, one step at a time.”

Starting a yoga regimen sitting in a chair, rather than on a mat on the floor, Gilmore began, within the next few months, to move freely, climb stairs, and go on walks. “Most importantly, I was in charge of my classroom again, offering my students the energy and vitality they deserve from their teacher.”

That’s real impact on clients with real problems. Multiplied over four decades, it’s a collective impact on the community, especially populations not always served well, and it certainly makes Senk deserving of being called a Healthcare Hero.

 

Brotherly Inspiration

Senk traces her passion for helping people to her childhood — in particular, her experiences with her younger brother, Bobby, who was born with cerebral palsy in 1955, long before the Americans with Disabilities Act codified many accessibility measures.

But Bobby had his family.

“My mother was a real advocate for him,” Senk recalled. “And we grew up in this environment in Forest Park where Bobby was one of the gang. We would accommodate him if he had trouble keeping up because of his crutches; we would just get him in a wagon and drag him around the neighborhood. He was always just part of the group. There was no, ‘well, Bobby can’t do that, so we can’t do it.’ It was never like that. It was always, ‘how can we creatively include him?’ And I think that’s really where this passion of mine comes from.”

Senk has had her own share of physical challenges as well; she was diagnosed with spinal issues at age 18 — issues that led to a lifetime of arthritis and have given her unique insight into people with similar problems, and led her into decades of advocacy in the broader arthritis community.

She’s never been free from arthritis; in fact, the day she spoke with BusinessWest at her home, Senk said she woke up with a lot of pain.

“My philosophy as a teacher is to educate and empower my students, my clients, to make the choices that feel right because they feel it in their body. They know how they feel.”

“It was just one of those days, you know?” she said. “So I started my gentle yoga I do every morning, I got in the shower, I was moving around my house, I had a class online that I teach, and then I had a client. And now I feel 1,000% better from when I woke up at 5:30 because I’ve been moving for six hours.

“It comes down to wanting to help people be functional, be fit, and have tools they can use to help themselves with whatever challenges they’re facing. And I think my passion for that came from a young age. Everything kind of flowed from all that: discovering how movement helps me and sharing that with others. Because I know how much movement helps me.”

Senk started her career with group exercise like step aerobics and regular low-impact aerobics, and later started practicing yoga to help her back — her main arthritic trouble spot. That was 35 years ago, and yoga has been an important part of her practice ever since.

the heart of my in-person classes on Tuesday nights

Cindy Senk calls these women “the heart of my in-person classes on Tuesday nights.”

“I have my basic certification, but then I have specialties in yoga for arthritis, accessible yoga, subtle yoga, and I use all of those to put together whatever program I need for this particular client in this particular class. I feel lucky to have a lot of tools in my toolbox.”

It’s been gratifying, she said, to help clients discover those tools, especially those who didn’t think they could achieve pain relief and mobility.

“A lot of times, in the beginning, people that are in chronic pain are very tentative about movement because they think they’re going to hurt worse,” she said, adding that she draws on her experience as a volunteer and teacher trainer with the Arthritis Foundation — and her own experience with arthritis, of course — to help them understand the potential of yoga and other forms of exercise.

“It’s the idea of the pain cycle, where we think, ‘oh I can’t; it hurts,’ so we move less, and then we hurt more,” she explained. “The idea of movement breaks that pain cycle. You’re giving the power to the client through movement. It’s a journey that I’m on with them.”

It’s a good idea, Senk said, for people in pain to first see their primary-care doctor or a specialist to find out exactly what’s wrong and what their options are, whether that’s yoga, an aquatic program, a walking program, or another activity that can keep them mobile.

“She met me where I was and created a personalized plan to move me to where I needed to be. She empowered me to take charge of my healing, unlocking the power inside of me, one step at a time.”

“There are more than 60 million of us in this country who have arthritis — and that’s doctor-diagnosed, so a lot of people probably have arthritis and are not doctor-diagnosed. And it’s not just older people; it’s kids as well. It’s very pervasive, unfortunately. So you need to get the knowledge first, and then, if you want to move and exercise or whatever it may be, you need to find a professional who knows what they’re doing.”

 

Living Her Passion

Senk’s four-decade career as a fitness professional has brought her to commercial fitness settings, hospitals, senior-living communities, corporate environments, and the studio she runs out of her own home. She has also taught as an adjunct professor at Holyoke Community College, Springfield College, and Manchester Community College, in addition to 25 years of volunteerism with the Arthritis Foundation and her role chairing of the Western Massachusetts Walk to Cure Arthritis for the past three years.

That’s a lot of passion poured into what essentially boils down to helping people enjoy life again.

“The bottom line for me is to just encourage people to find things that are helping them stay functional, whether it’s a gym they love to go to or a more private type of setting like I offer here,” she said, noting that her home studio also includes outdoor activities and virtual classes.

“I think it’s important for people to find where they fit, where they’re comfortable. And if they go to a gym or they go to a yoga studio and it’s not their fit, just keep looking. Find your people. Find the people that really speak to you and that will support you and not judge you and not put you down because maybe you can’t bend as much.”

She said she loves hearing clients say they were able to take a vacation and hike without falling down, ride a paddleboard, even reach up into the cabinets at their cabin.

Cindy Senk

Cindy Senk demonstrates some of the simple tools of her trade.

“I live for stuff like that. As somebody who has arthritis and chronic pain, I know it can be very easy to get in the bubble of your own head and say, ‘I can’t move today … right?’ But when I’m having my class here and I’m focusing on them, that takes a whole other attitude. It takes me out of my own pain space, if you will, and helping other people uplifts me. It just brings me joy and helps me feel better. It really does.”

It certainly has helped Lisa Borlen, a teacher at Valley View School in North Brookfield, one of Senk’s nominators, who shared how working with her has given both her and her mother a new outlook on life. Looking back to her recovery from surgery in 2021, she emphasized how Senk makes everyone feel welcome.

“I was still in a sling when I returned to yoga, and Cindy offered suggestions for poses from seated in a chair to standing against a wall,” she recalled. “My safety was her utmost concern. As I grew stronger, she made adjustments to the practice. I could continue to practice yoga with my class and I always felt supported. My physical therapist and surgeon were pleased with my progress and thought that the yoga classes were instrumental in my recovery.”

Susan Restivo, a retired Springfield teacher who also nominated Senk, joined Gilmore and Borlen in stressing that Senk is not only a teacher, but a lifelong learner, and that informs her work in the community.

“She is doing what she wants — what she started doing as a big sister, never knowing that helping her brother would be the start of her journey of serving others,” Restivo wrote. “Way back then, there was no equipment or an understanding of services for those that needed a Cindy Senk.”

That equipment and understanding are available now, though. So is Senk, and a lot of people are living more active, more pain-free, and happier lives because of the way she lives her passion.

“People say, ‘oh, you’re 70, you should retire, you should slow down,’” she said. “But I still feel like I have things to offer. I really do. I feel like I have people to help, ways to be of service, and I still have a lot of energy to do it. So that’s what I do.”

Healthcare Heroes

Community Health

Counseling and Testing Prevention and Education Program Director,
New North Citizens Council Inc.

Richard Johnson

Richard Johnson

He Has Made a Career of Being There for People Who Need Help, Direction

Richard Johnson has a simple and laudable philosophy when it comes to those seeking help. And it goes a long way to explaining why he’s a Healthcare Hero for 2021 in the always-competitive Community Health category.

“When people who are in need find the fortitude to step out of themselves and ask for assistance, there should be somebody to respond,” he told BusinessWest. “That’s because it takes a lot sometimes for many people to ask for help. And so, I like to make sure that, if I’m able, I can be that person to respond.”

For more than two decades now, during a lengthy career in public health, most recently as Counseling and Testing Prevention and Education Program director for the New North Citizens Council Inc., Johnson has been able — and ready — to respond and provide that help, in the many forms it can take.

His title is a mouthful, and there is a lot that goes into it.

Indeed, from his office at the Deborah Hunt Prevention and Education Drop-in Center, Johnson helps those in the Mason Square area of Springfield and beyond cope with issues ranging from HIV and sexually transmitted diseases to opioid and other addictions; from sickle-cell anemia awareness to treatment for mental-health issues.

And with the arrival of COVID-19, that list has only grown, with new responsibilities including everything from securing PPE for those in need to educating residents about the importance of vaccination. In short, he and his team have been helping people live with everything else going on in their lives and COVID.

“When people who are in need find the fortitude to step out of themselves and ask for assistance, there should be somebody to respond. That’s because it takes a lot sometimes for many people to ask for help. And so, I like to make sure that, if I’m able, I can be that person to respond.”

“We wanted to provide an education for these individuals so they could limit or at least mitigate some of their risk factors for contracting COVID and other things,” he explained. “So 2020 became COVID-intense. Our focus changed; our priority was educating people on how communicable this disease was, and saying to them, ‘yes, I understand that you have addiction challenges and housing challenges, but you really need to pay attention to how to prevent contracting COVID, and then we can work on some of the other things.’”

A day in the life for Johnson takes him to the drop-in center, but also to the neighborhoods beyond for off-site presentations and testing at various facilities on subjects ranging from substance abuse to prevention of communicable diseases to overdose prevention and Narcan distribution. These sites include the Friends of the Homeless facility, Carlson Detox Center, Opportunity House, Bowen Center, and Valor Recovery Center.

Richard Johnson, center, with many of the team members staffing the Deborah Hunt Prevention and Education Drop-in Center

Richard Johnson, center, with many of the team members staffing the Deborah Hunt Prevention and Education Drop-in Center in Mason Square.

COVID has reduced the numbers of such visits, but the work goes on, he said, adding that it is highly rewarding in many respects, because through it, he is helping not only individuals but neighborhoods and the larger community become more resilient.

This has become his life’s work, and his devotion to that work, that mission, has made him a Healthcare Hero for 2021.

 

Source of Strength

As he talked with BusinessWest in the tiny lab set up in the drop-in center, near the Rebecca Johnson School, Johnson said the facility lives up to every word over the door.

It is, indeed, a drop-in center, where one can find testing, counseling, education, and help with prevention. There is a team of individuals working there, but Johnson is the leader, in every aspect of that word. Meaning, he sets a tone for the work there, one born from experience working with this constituency and trying to meet its many and diverse needs.

He first became involved in community health in 2002, when he volunteered for an agency called Northern Educational Services, funded by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health.

“There were a number of folks I knew who were impacted by substance use and HIV,” he explained. “So this provided an opportunity for me to be directly involved in trying to navigate them to some sort of care.”

After this stint as a volunteer, he joined Northern Educational Services as a relapse counselor, and from there, he went from relapse prevention to HIV case management, starting first as an assistant and then working his way up to senior case manager. Ultimately, he became the director of Counseling and Testing Prevention and Education Services.

“Much of my work as a case manager centered on really just helping people to adjust to a new reality with regard to being diagnosed with HIV and confronting some of the stigmas associated with that,” he told BusinessWest. “I helped them understand that there are treatments that were effective, and helping them to communicate with their physican or medical provider as to what their concerns were and how their lives worked in terms of some of the stigmas associated with it and being able to talk to loved ones about their new status.

“That was really challenging for some,” he went on. “And so, case management at that time was a very hands-on thing; we made a great difference in the lives of those who were living with HIV, but equally so those who were unaware of how it was transmitted, and what prevention methods could be deployed by them, and that it was OK to have dinner with someone who was living with HIV, as opposed to some of the rumors, stories, or myths that they’d heard.”

Elaborating, he said that, for many, substance use and HIV went hand-in-hand, and efforts focused on helping people find recovery through detox and treatment facilities and helping these individuals understand that it was OK to live substance-free and face and confront some of their challenges involved with having a diagnosis that was highly stigmatized.

In 2010, he assumed that same title — director of Counseling and Testing Prevention and Education Services — with the New North Citizens Council, and has been continuing that challenging but needed work to counsel those in need and help with the medical and social aspects of HIV, sexually transmitted diseases, and substance abuse, while connecting people with healthcare providers.

“We’ve been very fortunate to have built relationships with medical providers that lend themselves to understanding that when we have an individual, that service, that treatment, needs to be provided, and they’re willing to provide it,” he said, listing Baystate Medical Center, Mercy Medical Center, and the Caring Health Center among the providers he and his team work with.

Over the years, Johnson has become involved with a number of community groups, boards, and commissions, including the Mason Square C-3 Initiative, the Massachusetts Integrated Planning Prevention Committee, Baystate Health’s Mason Square Neighborhood Health Center Community Advisory Board, the Baystate Health Community Benefits Advisory Council, and the Springfield Food Policy Committee.

As noted earlier, COVID has added new layers to the work and the mission for Johnson and his team. While helping individuals and families cope with what would be considered everyday matters, there is also a once-in-a-century pandemic to contend with.

Work to distribute PPE and other needed items, from masks to hand sanitizer, socks to toothpaste, goes on, said Johnson. “We still go about daily and provide PPE to people who are on the margins and often don’t have ready access to such items.”

Critical work on vaccination goes on as well, and comes in many forms, from education to dispel myths and misinformation to getting shots in arms. He mentioned a clinic at the drop-in center the day before he talked with BusinessWest, at which nine people received their second shot and two more got their first.

“Vaccination has been a challenge because there is a lot of information out there, and not all of it is accurate,” he explained. “There’s a significant amount of resistance based on information that individuals have received, so it’s really about re-educating people and helping them achieve a level of comfort receiving new information. As great and wonderful as the internet and social media are, sometimes it doesn’t provide both sides of a story.”

 

Bottom Line

Helping individuals and families achieve a needed level of comfort with many aspects of their lives — from living with HIV to battling substance abuse — has long been the best way to describe Johnson’s work and his commitment to the community.

As we noted that at the top, he fully understands just how hard it is to seek help. And that’s why it’s been his mission to be there for those who find the strength and fortitude to take that step.

His unwavering commitment to that mission has made him a Healthcare Hero.

 

George O’Brien can be reached at [email protected]

Healthcare Heroes

This Nurse Midwife Gave Birth to an Intriguing Concept in Care

Amy Walker

‘Accountability.’

After pausing to give the matter some thought, this was the word a woman who chose to be identified only by her initials — S.M. — summoned when asked about what the New Beginnings program at Cooley Dickinson Health Care has given her.

There were other things on that list, to be sure, she said, listing camaraderie, friends, ongoing education, and even role models of a sort. But accountability, on many levels, was what was missing most from her life, and New Beginnings, which supports pregnant women with an opioid-use disorder with education, skills development, peer support, and goal setting, helped her develop some at a time when she needed it most.

“I wanted to come even though I was struggling to stay sober,” she said, referring to the regular group meetings attended by mothers facing similar challenges. “I didn’t have to come, but I wanted to; it’s hard to explain, but it was the beginning of me being responsible and accepting the fact that I was pregnant and here with the other women in the same situation.”

These sentiments speak volumes about why Amy Walker, a certified nurse midwife at Cooley Dickinson Hospital (CDH), created the program in 2018, and also about its overall mission.

“We want to empower women to be successful mothers,” said Walker, whose efforts to create New Beginnings have not only filled a critical need within CDH’s broad service area but earned her the Healthcare Heroes award in the ultra-competitive Community Health category.

She said the foundation of the program is a group approach, which is nothing new when it comes to expectant mothers, but it is new when it comes to this specific at-risk population, which makes New Beginnings somewhat unique and innovative.

“I wanted to come even though I was struggling to stay sober. I didn’t have to come, but I wanted to; it’s hard to explain, but it was the beginning of me being responsible and accepting the fact that I was pregnant and here with the other women in the same situation.”

“There are a couple of other places in the country that are doing this,” she explained. “There’s not a lot of studies on this yet, but it made sense, because it works so well in general and has these added benefits of providing community and more education, that it seemed like the way to go.”

While the program is still in its relative infancy (pun intended), it is already providing some rather dramatic, and measurable, results. Indeed, since the initiative was launched, 10 women with substance-abuse disorders who have participated in the program have delivered at the Childbirth Center at CDH, and nine of the 10 babies went home with their mothers. Walker believes that number would have been much lower had it not been for New Beginnings.

To send more mothers suffering from opioid-abuse disorder home with their babies, New Beginnings provides the many things these women need at this critical, and vulnerable, time in their lives. That list includes what amounts to a support network at a time when family and friends may be unable or unwilling to fill that role.

Indeed, S.M. told BusinessWest that, while her mother was quite supportive during her pregnancy and the period to follow, her friends were still using drugs, and thus, she didn’t want to be around them.

Support is provided in the months and weeks prior to delivery, during delivery, and then during the post-partum period, said Walker, adding that, while post-delivery is a challenging time for most all mothers, it is especially so for those suffering from opioid-abuse disorder.

“The riskiest time for relapse is in the post-partum period,” she explained. “We find that many women are able to maintain sobriety during pregnancy, but of course, the stresses of parenting, and sometimes parenting with limited resources, can be a triggering factor when it comes to relapse.”

The program also provides education and help to mothers with babies diagnosed with neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS), the incidence of which is growing as the opioid crisis continues, said Walker.

Such babies are fussy, cry a lot, and are hard to soothe, she went on, adding that many remain in the hospital for several weeks. New Beginnings addresses these needs through something called the ‘eat/sleep/console’ method of evaluating and treating newborns with NAS, an initiative that results in shorter hospital stays and less opioid use for the newborn.

Above all else, New Beginnings provides a judgment-free zone that offers both compassion and quality care, said Walker, adding that all three ingredients are needed to properly provide for both mother and baby.

Pregnant Pause

Flashing back to her first New Beginnings group session roughly 16 months ago, S.M. remembers feeling relatively calm, but also a little uneasy about what she was getting herself into.

“I think was kind of numb and a little nervous,” she recalled, adding that she was struggling with sobriety at that time, when she was on methadone. “But at the same time, it felt comforting knowing what it was for; it was for women with addiction problems who were having babies. It was exactly what I needed at that time.”

S.M. said she was referred to New Beginnings several weeks earlier, about three months into her pregnancy and while she was still using heroin, which she described as her “drug of choice.” She said she was experiencing a number of emotions, but mostly anger — directed at herself.

“I was going through a really tough time accepting that I was pregnant,” she told BusinessWest while sitting in the same small room where the group sessions are held. “I couldn’t face the fact that I was using while I was pregnant, because I was really mad at myself. I came here because I wanted to do everything I could to try to do my best and get my life in order.”

Amy Walker says the New Beginnings program provides a critical judgment-free zone for pregnant women and new mothers battling opioid addiction.

In most every case, these emotions, these sentiments, and this particular drug of choice make S.M. typical of a growing number of women who are going through pregnancy while still using opioids or struggling with sobriety, usually through medication-assisted treatment such as methadone or Subutex, said Walker. She added that this growing demographic is an intriguing and sometimes overlooked aspect of the opioid epidemic — one that has now become a focal point of her work as a certified midwife.

And in many ways, this work reflects the values and passions (that’s a word you’ll read often) that brought her to the rewarding profession of midwifery — and will her bring to the podium at the Healthcare Heroes gala on Oct. 17 to accept the award in Community Health.

Our story begins during her undergraduate work when Walker took a job with Planned Parenthood in Gainesville, Fla. She worked at the front desk, selling birth-control pills and checking people in for their appointments.

“I was really inspired to grow in women’s health,” she explained. “I met nurse midwives and nurse practitioners who worked there, and started working in the Health Education department there, doing sex education, HIV-prevention outreach, and more, and from there I decided I wanted to go to midwifery school.”

She would earn her degree at Columbia University and, while doing so, see her career ambitions crystalize.

“My roots were really in gynecological care, but then I developed a love for caring for women and families during pregnancy and birth,” she explained. “I found that I love that intimate connection that you make with families.

“Meanwhile, one of my biggest passions was caring for underserved populations — people who maybe didn’t have access to all the care options,” she went on. “I wanted to provide them with the same type of care as someone who was more able to select what kind of care they wanted; that was really important to me.”

These twin passions have come together in a powerful way with New Beginnings, which Walker conceptualized several years after coming to CDH in 2014 after stints at Leominster Hospital and in St. Croix.

Tracing the origins of the program, she said it was one of many strategic initiatives that sprang from the work of an opioid task force created by CDH in 2016. That group’s work revealed that there were many unmet needs and, overall, that services needed to be better-organized and better-focused.

“I really wanted to be involved with that task force because I felt that the care we were giving to patients with substance-abuse disorders wasn’t really poor care, but it was all over the map,” she told BusinessWest. “There was no consistency in the messages that patients were getting and the education they were getting, and I knew that we could do better.”

One of those many efforts to do better is New Beginnings.

Delivering Results

At the heart of the program and its group sessions is the belief that women going through pregnancy while using opioids or trying to stay sober can benefit from being in the same room together, talking about their experiences, their emotions, their fears, and their hopes for the future.

And S.M.’s story, and her recollections of her year in the program, provide ample evidence that these beliefs are well-founded.

“It was really helpful coming here and knowing that there were other pregnant women who were either going through the same thing or had been there,” she said. “There were other women I’d met through New Beginnings who had kids and had them taken away. That made me feel … I don’t want to say better. It made me feel … well, not as mad at myself, knowing that someone else had been through this and had struggled with being able to have their kids in their life because of their addiction.

“I also came to know the risks of actually having her taken away,” she went on, referring to her daughter, who was playing with other children in the middle of the room as S.M. talked. “And knowing how mad I was just for using, that made me want to just do everything I could.”

These sentiments speak to that goal of empowering women to become successful mothers, said Walker, adding that empowerment comes through accountability and being responsible, but also through education.

And from the start, education has been one of the main focal points for New Beginnings, said Walker, who cited neonatal abstinence syndrome as an example.

“We expect it, and it’s treatable, but it can be challenging, because that baby may need a lot of soothing care, and sometimes needs to be held or soothed or rocked 100% of the time,” she explained. “All this could be challenging for anyone, but if you are someone with your own chronic illness who may not have a lot of support … all those things add up to make it really challenging.

“So if someone was coming into that without having any knowledge of how to care for their baby or what to expect from their hospital stay, that can be really shocking,” she went on. “I felt that we could do a better job of providing that educational prenatally, and there needed to be an avenue for that.”

Elaborating, she said that, typically, most pre-natal visits (for all women) run only about 15 minutes or so. This isn’t much time for women to learn or be supported. In response to this, she created two-hour group prenatal sessions for those involved with New Beginnings. The first hour would be the physical exam, she noted, while the other 90 minutes would be spent providing education and support in a group setting.

“We can cover so many more topics in that amount of time, as opposed to the 15-minute sessions, and you’re also speaking to many patients at a time,” Walker said. “And one of the great things about group prenatal care is that patients are able to hear from other patients and get their perspective.”

As noted earlier, the group sessions can extend to the post-partum period, which, as Walker said, is an extremely vulnerable time for those trying to stay sober.

“What we’re finding statistically is that the biggest risk for relapse is in the six- to 12-months post-partum time,” she noted. “Initially, in the first six months, there’s still a lot of that new-baby glow — even though it’s a hard time, there can still be sweetness. As they get older, it can get more draining; as one patient, who framed it in a good way, told me, ‘the newness wears off.’”

Only a year or so since working with its first participants, New Beginnings is generating measurable results.

Changing Room

S.M. told BusinessWest that the post-partum period was, indeed, a difficult time for her as she worked to keep sober amid the many changes and challenges that came into her life with motherhood.

She said she kept coming to group sessions staged by New Beginnings not because she had to, but because she wanted to — and needed to.

“I was having a hard time, but I just kept holding myself accountable,” she said. “There were days when I wanted to stay home and watch TV, but I made myself come to those meetings.”

She still struggles with being a mother — and with staying sober — but she knows she doesn’t have to face these challenges alone.

And that’s what New Beginnings is all about.

George O’Brien can be reached at [email protected]

Healthcare Heroes

This Pediatrician and Coalition Builder Has Helped Create a Healthier Community

Dr. Matthew Sadof

Dr. Matthew Sadof

Most people who have been working professionally for nearly 40 years have had a number of desk chairs, especially as technology has advanced and the office has become more ergonomically correct.

Dr. Matthew Sadof has had exactly … one.

It was given to him upon completion of his residency at New York Hospital, and it’s been with him ever since. It’s a low, wooden chair with arms, and Sadof obviously likes how it looks and feels — for the most part, anyway. But the reason he keeps it is what’s written on the back: “Go and do thou likewise.”

That’s the school’s motto, but far more importantly, it’s Sadof’s approach to life and also his life’s work, as will be made clear as we explain why he is the Healthcare Hero in the Community Health category.

“One of the things that I’ve tried to practice my whole life is something called tikkun olam, which means to heal the world,” he told BusinessWest. “And that’s what I try to do. I’ve been sitting in this chair since I graduated. It’s my chair; I’ve had opportunities for other chairs, but I like this one.”

The Heroes award is only the latest of many to be bestowed upon Sadof, a pediatrician at Baystate Children’s Hospital, whose chair resides in a small office at the Baystate High Street Health Clinic, in the middle of one of Springfield’s poorest neighborhoods, as it has for the past 20 years.

“Dr. Sadof has demonstrated that a physician who is dedicated to improving the health and well-being of his patients must go beyond the office walls and work diligently to improve the health of the community.”

This office is, by his own admission, not at all asthma-healthy, with its carpeting, drop ceiling, and somewhat poor ventilation. Which is ironic, because he is perhaps best known for helping to lead an all-out battle against asthma in a city consistently ranked among the worst in the nation for asthma health.

His leadership role in the Community Asthma Coalition and related initiatives has dramatically improved the environment across Springfield and reduced hospitalizations dramatically, but he would be the first to note that, with the city’s poor housing stock, there is considerable work still to do.

However, there is more to Sadof’s story than helping children and families breathe easier, literally and figuratively. He has also been a passionate advocate for the underserved and the marginalized, working with medically fragile and technology-dependent children and their parents, who are often overwhelmed by their medical needs. Meanwhile, he has worked to address the social and medical difficulties faced by adolescents in Springfield, patients who often fall through the cracks as they age out of pediatrics and fail to connect with an adult-medicine provider.

As he sat down to talk with BusinessWest to talk about the many facets of his work — yes, in that chair from NYU — Sadof made it clear that, while he is honored to be named a Healthcare Hero, he stressed that whatever progress has been made in terms of making Springfield a healthier community has been a team effort, not the work of one man.

“I can’t over-emphasize that it’s not just me,” he said, referring not only to the asthma initiatives but a deep portfolio of projects he’s been involved with. “I work with lots of wonderful people; you need a whole community of people to really change a community.”

Still, Sadof has established himself as a clear leader in these efforts and a role model for the medical students and residents he teaches.

Dr. Laura Koenings, vice chair of the Education Department of Pediatrics at Baystate Children’s Hospital, who nominated Sadof for the Healthcare Heroes award, may have summed up his devotion to community — and his approach to achieving progress — best.

“Dr. Sadof has demonstrated that a physician who is dedicated to improving the health and well-being of his patients must go beyond the office walls and work diligently to improve the health of the community,” she wrote. “A role-model physician looks for gaps in the healthcare-delivery system and strives to bring better healthcare to the underserved, whether that is the infant with complex medical needs on a home ventilator and a gastronomy tube for feeding, or the teenager out on the streets without a medical home.”

Sadof continues to do all these things, and that explains why he’s a true Healthcare Hero.

Clearing the Air

Sadof said it wasn’t long after he arrived at the High Street Clinic that he began to realize the full extent of the asthma problem in Springfield.

“My very first week, there was a kid who came in who had really, really, really bad asthma,” he recalled. “So bad that I had to go on the ambulance and transport him to ICU. He needed a breathing machine — he needed to be intubated — and while I was there, I looked at his mother, and I couldn’t help but notice that she had a Band-Aid on her arm and a hospital bracelet on her wrist.

“I said, ‘what happened to you?’ he went on. “And her asthma was really bad. I asked her where she lived, and she went on to describe an apartment building that had cockroaches, rodents, leaky windows, and mold — all of which are very potent triggers for asthma.”

Dr. Matthew Sadof says he’s had one desk chair throughout his lengthy career

Dr. Matthew Sadof says he’s had one desk chair throughout his lengthy career and lives by what’s written on the back: ‘Go and do thou likewise.’

Thus began what might be called a crusade against asthma, as well as a pattern of not only treating patients but asking them where they live. And not only asking them where they live, but taking steps to do something about where they live and removing some of those triggers for asthma.

“We teach people how to clean with vinegar, baking soda, baking powder, and castile soap, and that’s made a huge difference,” he explained. “We also showed people how to store food properly and store garbage properly in a way that doesn’t promote the growth of rodents and insects.”

Before getting into more detail about his efforts to combat asthma and the many other aspects of his work, it’s necessary to explain how Sadof arrived at the High Street Clinic.

Our story starts back at medical school, where, by this third year, Sadof realized he wanted to spend his career working with young people.

“I knew that I liked to talk to people, and I knew I liked to work with young families,” he recalled. “And I knew I liked working with children because they’re growing, and there’s the possibility to make a real impact on the trajectory of someone’s life when you start early.”

He practiced in Pittsfield for 10 years, doing general pediatrics, before he and his family relocated to Philadelphia to “try something new,” as he put it. Things didn’t exactly work out there as he hoped, so the family decided to return to what they considered home.

A former colleague was working at the High Street Clinic at the time. Sadof asked her what the lay of the land was, and she mentioned that the clinic was looking for someone. And, long story short, Sadof became that someone.

“Something about this place just felt really good,” he told BusinessWest, noting that, 20 years later, he still feels the same way.

“There was a huge need for services,” he explained. “And there were bright students and residents that I could work with. And practicing and teaching medicine at the same time keeps you really sharp. They’re always asking you questions that you may not know the answers to, so we all look it up and learn it together.”

Finding answers to some of Springfield’s most vexing health problems has been Sadof’s M.O. since arriving on High Street, and, as noted, asthma soon become one of his top priorities.

But to address it, he knew the city needed to bring together a number of players to form a solid, united front against the disease. And it really started with that visit his first week on the job.

“That’s when I started thinking about how important it was for me to start to address some of the root causes of asthma, and about what I could do to build a bridge from the clinic to the community,” he recalled. “They weren’t calling it the ‘social determinants of health’ back then, but that’s really what we were doing.”

Within a year after arriving at High Street, Sadof became the medical director of the clinic, and around that same time, he was approached by a grant writer from what was then Partners for a Healthier Community (now the Public Health Institute of Western Mass.) to apply to be part of the National Collaborative Inner-city Asthma Study.

Fast-forwarding a little, the local group was awarded a grant, and a social worker was hired to be an asthma counselor, he went on, adding that parent groups were formed, individualized counseling was provided, and other steps were taken not only to treat people who were sick but to make homes more “asthma clean.”

In 2001, the Pioneer Valley Asthma Coalition was formed, and Sadof, who started in what he called an observer role, became its chair in 2004. In 2009, he help forged a partnership with Boston University whereby a stimulus grant from the national Institute of Environmental Health was secured to create something called the READY (Reducing and Eliminating Asthma Disparity in Youth) program.

“We trained community health workers to teach people how to keep their home asthma clean,” he explained, adding that there would be a series of five home visits in the course of six months. “And anecdotally, I could tell which families were in the program and which ones weren’t; we cut hospitalizations down dramatically and cut hospital days down dramatically.”

Care Package

But while Sadof is perhaps best known for his work to combat asthma, there are many other aspects to his practice, all of which relate directly to what’s written on the back of his chair.

Indeed, while recognizing a real problem with asthma, Sadof said he also quickly realized there was a large number of children with severe disabilities and families struggling to care for them. And he’s continuously looking for new and innovative ways to meet the many needs of both these children and their families.

“I have lots of children who are technologically dependent,” he explained. “These are children who are on ventilators at home, they have feeding tubes, they often require 24-hour care … they and their families require services, and they need help.

“From listening to these kids, I was always trying to figure out a better way to do things,” he went on, adding that he was approached in 2012 by officials at Boston University Medical School with the goal of developing a grant to help improve complex care.

Baystate and BU were eventually awarded a $6 million grant ($1 million each over three years) to develop something called the 4C program. That’s an acronym for Collaborative Consultative Care Coordination program, which was created to help parents and pediatricians coordinate care for the most medically complex children in Western Mass. Each word in that acronym is important, and collectively they explain what it is and how it works.

“We developed a couple of teams, with myself as the complex-care doctor, where we brought people in, took in all their data, and put it into a cloud-based care plan,” he explained. “These care plans lived on their phones, and they were accessible by any kind of electronic device and were accessible by their primary-care doctor and by the hospital and the families.

The consultative-care program created for each family consisted of a nurse care coordinator, a social worker, a so-called ‘family navigator,’ a nutritionist, and a psychologist, he went on.

“There’s been a huge influx of patients from Puerto Rico, people whose lives were blown away who are medically complicated and very fragile. People with heart defects, lung defects, neurological issues, and we’ve been working hard to keep them healthy. It’s great work and its very rewarding.”

“And we really improved the lives of lots of kids,” he said with a large dose of satisfaction evident in his voice. “We were able to decrease the cost of healthcare by a lot and improve the satisfaction of families. This was a consultative program where we worked with primary-care doctors to keep the care inside the patient’s medical home, close to where they lived; we worked with schools, we worked closely with housing to make sure we could make accommodations, we did home assessments and home visits. The idea was to try to support families through this work, and it was incredibly rewarding.”

He used the past tense because the grant funding ended at the close of 2017. The plan is to find a way to restore and continue the initiative through the new accountable-care program being created. Meanwhile, Sadof continues to care for children with complex needs, mostly without the same comprehensive teams made possible by the 4C program, and the number of patients in that category has swelled in the wake of Hurricane Maria, which devastated Puerto Rico almost exactly a year ago.

“There’s been a huge influx of patients from Puerto Rico, people whose lives were blown away who are medically complicated and very fragile,” he explained. “People with heart defects, lung defects, neurological issues, and we’ve been working hard to keep them healthy. It’s great work, and its very rewarding.”

There’s that phrase again. Sadof uses if often, and it speaks to the passion he brings to his work, which, by and large, involves a poor, very challenged constituency, and many of the sickest children in this region — and beyond it.

To explain that passion, Sadof related the story of his father, who had tuberculosis.

“I just have this vision of my grandmother bringing my father to a clinic, where his test came back positive,” he explained, noting that his father had two aunts who died from the disease. “I carry that picture of my father and my grandmother with me always … and I look at the mothers here, and I say, ‘100 years ago, this was my family.’

“And the test about what decisions I make is that ‘if this was my family, what would I want to do? What would I want done for my family?’” he went on. “It has to pass that test. And it’s not always the easiest answer, and it’s certainly not the fastest answer.”

It Sits Well with Him

For the last word on the honoree in the Community Health category, we return to Laura Koenings’ nomination:

“Dr. Sadof recognized early on that it takes a village, and not just the actions of a single physician, to improve the long-term health of the community,” she wrote. “This is why he has always been a coalition builder — helping to unify patients, families, community agencies, and government entities to work together for a healthier community. He also recognized that, in order to advocate for his patients and their families, he must understand their needs and bring their voices to the agencies and government entities that are part of his coalition.”

He has done all that, and that’s why, from the day he earned that chair, he’s been a Healthcare Hero. u

George O’Brien can be reached at [email protected]