The VNA Community Services Program creates community leaders taking charge of health.

The hardworking staff at the Visiting Nurse Association brings preventative health services like vaccinations to the community, making wellness more accessible. Creating a program to bring health education directly to corporations was in line with their mission.

The program, launched at area companies, began with employee health screenings. The VNA then makes presentations, including to workers in farm fields, helping patients tackle issues like stress reduction and diabetes prevention.

But Andrea Zoodsma, VNA’s director of community services, says being in the fields taught them the program’s limits. Many workers, for example, were men not doing the grocery shopping; they couldn’t affect change very well.

A new program takes the idea to a community level. The VNA approached CHISPA – a nonprofit affordable housing developer – to bring a pilot to the Gabilan Townhouses development in Salinas.

Three residents were selected as program leaders. Working with the VNA, leaders decided which issues to address and how.

“What made this project so successful was that it was completely resident-driven,” says Ruth Rodriguez, community services manager for CHISPA. “They feel it was their program.”

In the past two years, leaders have organized classes covering everything from nutrition to the effects of chronic stress. The VNA helped residents who had never done an exercise program to begin one. Cooking classes showed residents how to prepare healthier food. Zumba sessions got residents moving – and quickly became so popular they had to move to a nearby school.

“These are working people; it’s hard for them to get out to classes so we bring it to them,” Zoodsma says. The programming also gives the chance for whole families to prevent chronic health conditions before they set in.

Now two years into the pilot, 44 percent of participants became more active, 62 percent saw improved blood pressure and 31 percent saw improved cholesterol levels.

With the third year and final year of the pilot approaching, the VNA and CHISPA are preparing to take the program to other neighborhoods. But they need funding to make it happen.

“The whole objective is to create a culture of health,” Zoodsma says. “We’re not just giving them something and saying ‘Good luck with that.’ They’re invested and we’re invested.”

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