Page 26 - BusinessWest September 19, 2022

HEALTHCARE HEROES OF WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS
laboratory; from diversity, equity, and inclusion to community relations.
“We were able to pull together a multi- disciplinary group of folks who saw the importance of convening and doing this work,” Pirraglia said. “Despite the jobs they had and their schedules, we met on a weekly basis for many, many months in a
“I can’t emphasize enough how important our community health workers were in this work. We were the coaches, but they
were the players; they were the ones on the field making this happen.”
row; attendance was phenomenal. That’s because people saw the need to do this.”
The goal was to figure out the needs of the Springfield population and communicate with them in a way that was meaningful, and the work progressed rapidly.
Initially, the workgroup explored ways to protect people who were at risk, trying to catch people who had not been infected and keep them from getting infected, while identifying who was infected and making sure those around them
had protection. To aid
in this effort, a grant from the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts enabled community health workers (CHWs) to supply materials such
as facemasks, portable pulse oximeters to measure blood-oxygen levels, and room dividers and air mattresses so families could quarantine within their own living spaces.
“We really broke into
two groups, one group
more patient-facing and
another group more community-facing, and then continued to meet and engage and make sure there was good crosstalk back and forth between us,” Pirraglia told BusinessWest, while stressing the importance of communication early on.
“The communication was with the community and within all the different groups that were participating in this workgroup. But we were also communicating with our community health workers, the on-the-ground folks, the ones gathering the patient needs and delivering on those needs. And the communication, I have
to say, was pretty robust, in large part because people were committed to making this happen.”
The group performed geographic analysis to
This Springfield Housing Authority testing event was organized by the COVID mitigation team.
determine where to focus its efforts, gathering information about patient conditions in various areas so they could inform the CHWs on the ground about which areas were riskiest and who needed help, he explained.
“We had to prioritize what we were doing, so communication was paramount. At our Tuesday meetings every week, we’d say, ‘this is what the maps are showing, this is what we now about pharmacy deliveries, this is what we know about food deliveries, this
is what we know about the ability to
Pirraglia
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