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HARVARD, Ill. (AP) — The first treatment that Elizabeth Rios administered at the Harvard Area Community Health Center didn't come in a bottle, but in a sentence.
Rios, a family nurse practitioner, discovered when she talked to her patients, many of them migrant workers who primarily - or only - spoke Spanish, hearing familiar speech was often the first defense against some of their ailments.
"Little by little they come back and they trust you more," Rios said. "They explode with all this information and all the conditions they've been suffering with for years."
Rios, 39, has spent the past four years making similar connections with migrant and seasonal workers in McHenry County. It's a dream job, she said, because she serves a population that might otherwise go unheard or misunderstood.
Rios started at the Community Health Partnership of Illinois in 2011 as a bilingual staff nurse. Her time spent there while she was doing clinical work for her master's degree drew her attention to the population and never let it go.
"That's what I wanted to do; work at the clinic like that," Rios said. "Most of them were Hispanic, Latino, Mexican, immigrant workers. They need to have a provider who spoke the language. I understand many of their cultural needs."
She was promoted to a nurse practitioner in 2012, and stayed with the clinic once it moved from Woodstock to Harvard in 2013.
Up to 50 patients walk into her office weekly, she said. During their visits, she often warns them about the harmful chemicals and pesticides they're exposed to and against wearing their work clothes home. Sometimes the visits are about educating patients about drinking water instead of soda and eating healthy foods to avoid diseases such as diabetes and high blood pressure - diseases with a powerful grip on the Hispanic community.
Hispanics are almost twice as likely as whites to be diagnosed with diabetes and they are 50 percent more likely than whites to die from diabetes, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service's Office of Minority Health.
Poverty, language and cultural roadblocks might confound diabetes and other diseases among migrant workers, the Migrant Clinician Network contends. The Texas-based agency that advocates and supports care for migrants, recently honored Rios by naming her one of its "30 Clinicians Making a Difference."
It's an honor that's well deserved, said Kimberlee Greif, the clinical director at the Harvard office. Greif said the migrant population, which makes up about 60 percent of the clinic's patients, has undoubtedly become more educated and aware of health issues since Rios started. She sees the gap between doctors and migrants closing daily because of Rios.
Greif said she's counting down the days until Rios, a mother of four, returns from maternity leave.
"She comes in early, stays late," Greif said. "She calls patients at home. She helps with outreach in the camps and fields. We've missed her terribly."
The feeling is mutual. Although she's busy with her children and school - Rios is working toward a Ph.D. in nursing at the University of Illinois at Chicago that she hopes to use to do diabetes research with Mexican -Americans - she wants to see her patients again.
Among those patients will be the ones that leave the largest impression on Rios: the men who break down under the pressure of missing their families in Mexico, a chronic illness or fear of losing their job. It's only happened three or four times since she started, but Rios said she knows when she's looking at a man with a heavy depression.
And as it was when she first started at the clinic, Rios said it's a matter of letting them speak.
"They don't go away with a prescription in their hand," Rios said. "They go away with a smile, and that tells me a lot."
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Source: The (Crystal Lake) Northwest Herald, http://bit.ly/1PZr0J6
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Information from: The Northwest Herald, http://www.nwherald.com
This is an Illinois Exchange story offered by The (Crystal Lake) Northwest Herald.
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