Page 45 - Healthcare News August 2021

HEALTHCARE EDUCATION CONT’D
Zionville, N.C. — with a population just over 2,000 — Conrad knew of people who had transportation issues and some who were homeless, but his town had no resources for them.
“I thought, if I lived somewhere with a homeless shelter, everything would be better,” he said. “Well, Springfield has a large homeless shelter, and they can’t take everyone in, so for lots of people, it’s still not better.”
“You’ve got to have a lot of pioneer in you to try the program. And our students certainly did.”
Conrad credits PURCH for giving him a broader understanding of societal problems.
“What I saw growing up in rural Appalachia are the same problems that affect people here,” he said. “It seems these problems are more of a poor-people thing than a regional thing.”
As a former teacher, Amanda Whitehouse was drawn to PURCH through her interest in address- ing health inequities. In her teaching days, she took part in Teach for America, a national program that brought teachers to historically disenfranchised cities. She’s been “pleasantly surprised” at the parallels she
has found between health and education.
“We know there are social determinants of health,
and one of those is certainly educational equity,” Whitehouse said. “Even access to healthcare can affect someone’s access to education.” She gave an example of a student without a primary-care physician who misses the first two weeks of school just because of the logistics surrounding that one event.
Whitehouse also appreciates that PURCH address- es both urban and rural issues, as both settings have their challenges. She worked on the Quaboag Connec- tor project with Noone and noted the transportation- access issues as well as the small number of providers in rural areas. Now, as a resident in internal medicine and pediatrics, she spends part of her training as a primary-care provider at the Baystate Mason Square Neighborhood Health Center in Springfield. She said her time at Mason Square is a high point in her train- ing because the center integrates other resources as part of its care delivery.
“Health workers there link patients to stand-
ing resources in the community,” Whitehouse said. “Everyone from therapists to financial counselors are available to patients.” In the same spirit of PURCH, Mason Square addresses many of the factors that contribute to a person’s overall health.
Because PURCH encourages experiential learning, Hinchey hopes to demystify some of the elements that go into being a doctor. One notable example involves inviting an auto mechanic to speak to medical stu- dents about diagnostics.
“As doctors, we ask the same types of questions
when we diagnose a patient as a mechanic, such as ‘what makes it better?’ or ‘what makes it worse?’” he said, adding that the concepts are the same, but the method helps it resonate more strongly with students. “If I stand in front of class and talk about how I diag- nose patients, it’s not nearly as memorable as having an auto mechanic talk about her process to diagnose problems.”
One of Conrad’s PURCH projects involved work- ing with Revitalize Community Development Corp. in its efforts to address homelessness among veterans in Hampden County. His father recently retired after 27 years in the Army, and his grandfather also served. Currently an Army Reservist, Conrad said military service tends to be a tradition only in families of lower economic means. For that reason, he thought it im- portant for his classmates, many of whom might not know any veterans, to be part of this program.
“There are lots of misconceptions about service and what life after service looks like, so I was glad to see my classmates meet with these veterans,” he said. “This project also educated me on how hard it is for veterans to get access to some programs, even after they earned them through their service.”
Conrad also observed that people in Springfield can have complex problems, and he appreciates PURCH for the chance to better understand them.
“Rather than just attending classes in our nice building at 3601 Main Street, we went out and learned
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