Page 10 - Healthcare News May/June 2022

Ysabel Garcia
Founder, Estoy Aqui LLC; Age 29
Suicide is not an easy topic to talk about. But Ysabel Garcia knows firsthand that it is a subject that must be addressed. A first-generation Dominican immigrant, she identifies as a psychiatric survivor who experienced what she calls the “failures of the mental-health system.”
“I got stuck in the psychiatric hospitalization residential programs system,” she explained. “I started this whole journey of hospitalizations. Social workers started to come to the home we moved into ... but the thing about that
is that any time I said that I was suicidal, they wouldn’t
ask me questions or anything like that. The only thing
they did was pick up the phone and call 911. Then, police would come to the home and then get me into basically an emergency room for hours to then be hospitalized, to then be thrown into residential programs ... every two to three
Sina Holloman
Chief Executive Officer, HomeCare Hands; Age 38
One of Sina Holloman’s favorite quotes is “fortune favors the bold.” But she adds to it, “once you receive that fortune, social responsibility becomes your mission.”
After starting with a single client, Holloman’s HomeCare Hands provides in-home caregiving throughout Western Mass., Connecticut, and even into Boston.
Originally trained as a nurse, she enjoyed working with seniors and began researching how to turn her passion into a business. Now celebrating its seventh anniversary, HomeCare Hands has always found ways to expand to meet client needs. Originally providing homecare and personal aides, the business added a transportation division to help clients get to appointments. During the
Sasha Jiménez
Community Outreach Specialist, Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts; Age 31
Sasha Jiménez has performed plenty of jobs in her life — gas-station cashier, summer-programs facilitator, teacher of English and science, just to name a few — but her current role may be closest to her heart.
As the Community Outreach manager for Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts, Jiménez provides resources to organizations across the Commonwealth
and connects them to referral partners. She also gives presentations at schools and other venues and is the team lead for the organization’s HIV-prevention plan.
Her interest in this area was sparked as a freshman at Pioneer Valley Performing Arts Charter Public School. “I was exposed to such a broad range of topics, one of them being sexual reproductive health — not just the disparities that
Michael Lynch
Chief Financial Officer, Holyoke Soldiers’ Home; Age 31
months, I was in the hospital just because social workers didn’t know how to handle conversations about suicide.”
Eventually, Garcia obtained her GED and then a degree in child psychology from Bay Path University, where she would later earn her master of public health degree. After she began working in the field, she quickly realized
that the system was lacking.
Her answer was to create Estoy Aqui LLC, an education
initiative that provides suicide-prevention and social-justice training to organizations and businesses primarily serving Latinx and black communities to raise awareness of the underlying sociocultural and racial factors that increase suicide risk in these populations.
Looking back on her own experiences, she saw a clear
pandemic, the company created a staffing agency to help medical facilities find workers. This year, HomeCare Hands opened an education division to train future home health aides and personal- care assistants.
Along the way, Holloman has always been eager to learn, and joined a business mentoring group.
“I was hoping to be a mentee, but they asked me to be a mentor,” she said. “It was a great experience because it helped me grow as a person and as a businesswoman.”
Now in demand as a speaker for groups and conferences, Holloman enjoys sharing all that she’s learned.
“I didn’t have a mentor, so I want to be there for others,” she said. “I tell them, ‘as long as you show up, have grit and patience, you can do this.’”
Holloman created the Humble Heroes Foundation to
existed, but also the atrocities done to Puerto Rican women and Nicaraguan women, and how important sexual reproductive health is to marginalized communities,” she explained. “I’ve been passionate about it ever since.”
Even while teaching at Putnam Vocational Technical Academy, she’d bring in Tapestry to give
workshops on consent, and coordinated a donation drive to make menstrual products available and easily accessible at area high schools and homeless shelters.
Her daughter has been another source of her passion. “I’m trying to build a place where she can access something as basic as menstrual products or birth control or a Pap smear or chest exam. Part of my profession is making sure this work continues — not only for my daughter, but so all women have access to sexual reproductive health.”
Active in the community, Jiménez was instrumental in the passing of the Paris Agreement Declaration 4.0, signed by Mayor Domenic Sarno, designating Springfield as a
Michael Lynch’s accounting and finance career has long focused on roles with a community benefit.
Like when he joined the city of Springfield in 2014,
working in Disaster Recovery and Compliance, a new unit created after the June 2011 tornado to fund new housing projects, demolish blighted properties, and improve the city in other ways.
need for such a venture. “I thought, ‘why is there nobody talking about what I care about?’ I started researching and looking for organizations to find out who is talking about suicide or who is talking about the psychiatric system, the abuses that go on in there, because it is not only that I was involuntarily hospitalized, it’s also that I went through physical restraints, solitary confinement, and a bunch of abuses.”
Garcia realized that the people working in the psychiatric system didn’t take into consideration social or cultural factors or assimilation problems that someone like herself went through.
“They looked at everything through a very white lens,” Garcia said, and she knew she needed to do something about it. She’s doing just that, as a social-justice educator, a skilled dialogue facilitator, a wounded healer, and a change agent.
— Elizabeth Sears
recognize everyday caregivers, the people who quietly care for a loved one or a neighbor. While many organizations support the afflicted person, she noted, those providing care are often overlooked.
“We want to take the people who are always in the back and bring them forward,” she went on. “We want to let them know we appreciate them and we see them.”
The recognition involves granting any kind of wish the caregiver might have as well as free care from HomeCare Hands. While Holloman thought the requests would be for exotic vacations, instead they were for simpler things like spa days and going out for dinner. “It was humbling to see what people actually wanted and what made them feel good.”
Now with more than 200 employees and growing, Holloman sees it as her responsibility to keep making bold moves for her clients and community.
“We’re in the business of people,” she said. “They need us, and they can’t wait.”
— Mark Morris
Fast Track City committed to HIV/AIDS prevention and awareness initiatives.
Jimenez, who has earned degrees at Springfield Technical Community College, Smith College, and UMass Amherst, has also helped Putnam students access extracurricular opportunities for college readiness and improved MCAS scores through social and emotional learning; supported Inclusive Strategies and its goal of addressing systemic racism statewide; organized and advocated for political candidates; and worked with domestic-violence survivors at the YWCA while providing support with housing, employment, and other social determinants of health.
That role at the YWCA, in particular, opened Jiménez’s eyes to health disparities among women, especially in regard to intimate-partner violence, HIV prevention, and substance-use disorder, she said.
And as for all those other jobs in her past? They’re all important on her journey to the critical work she’s doing today, she said. “It’s always OK to be passionate and pursue something else and follow whatever feeds your soul.”
— Joseph Bednar
Four years later, Lynch transitioned to the state level, serving as fiscal director for the Western Region of the Department of Youth Services. When the governor declared a state of emergency early in the COVID-19 pandemic, Lynch immediately began working with his colleagues
to procure appropriate PPE to protect DYS youth and personnel on a daily basis.
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