{"id":18805,"date":"2023-10-23T12:21:55","date_gmt":"2023-10-23T16:21:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vdh.virginia.gov\/richmond-city\/?p=18805"},"modified":"2023-10-24T08:45:58","modified_gmt":"2023-10-24T12:45:58","slug":"waymakers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vdh.virginia.gov\/richmond-city\/2023\/10\/23\/waymakers\/","title":{"rendered":"Health Literacy and Trustworthiness: Spotlight on Waymakers Foundation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
\"Waymakers<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n\n\n
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Today, we\u2019re\u00a0spotlighting\u00a0Waymakers Foundation<\/a>, a food bank, community hub, and\u00a0Health Equity Fund<\/a>\u00a0recipient that works predominantly with Hispanic and Latino communities in the greater Richmond area. Waymakers founder Natasha Lemus considers trust one of the keys to the organization\u2019s success, which is something she’s cultivated during her 16 years of living and advocating in Richmond: \u201cHaving trust with the community is not something you can do with a pop-up event.\u201d<\/p>\n

Health Literacy Month<\/a>\u00a0highlights just how important trust is for public health. We\u2019re all more likely to base our decisions off of information we trust. Think, for example, about the friend you call when you need advice\u2014they’re probably someone who respects and cares for you, and whose advice has been good in the past.<\/p>\n

In the early days of COVID-19 vaccination, a lot of publications wrote about some communities\u2019 understandable\u00a0\u201clack of trust\u201d<\/a>\u00a0in the healthcare system, particularly in light of historical harm masquerading as healthcare like the Tuskegee experiments. Increasingly, though, health literacy specialists are calling for a change to this phrase. \u201cWhat if we stopped asking about trust and began asking about trustworthiness?\u201d says\u00a0Dr. Cliff Coleman<\/a>\u00a0of Oregon Health & Science University. If measuring trust focuses on what a community of people does or doesn\u2019t have, thinking about trustworthiness encourages providers and organizations to take responsibility for building and changing relationships.<\/p>\n

Waymakers began as a food distribution center, with an emphasis on groceries that would feel familiar to Hispanic and Latino families. The care with which Natasha and her team have approached their work in food access has allowed Waymakers to expand as a site for COVID-19 testing and vaccination and as a home for resource fairs, fitness classes, youth groups, and more. Below, Natasha shares some of the lessons she\u2019s learned about practicing trustworthiness to make sure her community can benefit from the resources that exist, particularly during a global pandemic:<\/p>\n

Adjust your work to meet community needs\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Waymakers\u2019 food operations began in 2020 as a standard box of groceries that matched what Hispanic families would be most likely to cook with: corn flour, dried beans, and fresh produce. Over time, the model switched to a small market, in which clients choose their own goods: \u201cThe Hispanic community is diverse,\u201d Natasha says. \u201cAs we have more countries making RVA their home, we were packing what we still knew was culturally appropriate but not actually from their own country. So now families come in, they get a shopping cart, and they get to choose what they\u2019re taking home. Only you know how much you need of what. We make sure everything\u2019s fresh, everything\u2019s ready to go. We make sure we\u2019re giving something they can take home with dignity, at least for today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Direct, culturally aware communication is everything\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Natasha\u2019s team took hard but necessary risks in working face-to-face early in the pandemic: “If we really wanted to educate our community, we had to put on the shoes and get the work done. There was just nothing else to do. You don\u2019t want your community out there facing the pandemic in their own house. We had to let them know that this is real. And if we don\u2019t have enough people out there to speak the language, then it\u2019s up to us to help.\u201d<\/p>\n

Natasha, whose family hails from the Dominican Republic, also observes a lot of linguistic diversity among her staff and clients: \u201cThe language is different from South America to Central America. The levels of education in our community changes. We have a lot of families who speak dialect from Guatemala and none of our staff speaks that. So we have to be careful with communicating with our community. Sometimes we repeat ourselves on our posts and just word it differently, or put a visual or video to get the communication in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Be consistent: do what you say you\u2019re going to do\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0Waymakers became a site for people to access Spanish-language COVID-19 testing and vaccination services. Once again, Natasha and her staff depended on their communication skills:<\/p>\n

\u201cOur job was to change the mindset, and we opened up the spot for partners to do vaccination here. And in the beginning, the community did not react positively to that. I had to say \u2018this is free, I will not ask for any of your information, we will speak to you in your native language. Come in and get checked.\u2019 Then families would come.<\/p>\n

We had to give people the details before they came in\u2014they\u2019d really want to know, \u2018are you going to swab in my nose or in my mouth?\u2019 If you\u2019re telling someone that they\u2019re going to walk in and get a test that swabs in their mouth, you better have that in their mouth. Because as soon as you start touching their nose they\u2019re going to refuse and then say \u2018In this center, they lie. I did not want anything in my nose.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Set expectations to make sure everyone gets what they need\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Natasha\u2019s values are front and center in the way she trains her staff and works with clients: \u201cWe are going to serve you, and we are going to make sure that we are serving you with respect and that we\u2019re being respected,\u201d she says. This policy extends to clients who may get frustrated about hours or food availability. With a client like that, Natasha tells her staff, \u201cWe don\u2019t know what she’s going through. We don\u2019t know what happened last night or that morning that maybe she had to buy more groceries. Yes, she came last week\u2014can we ask her what her need is again? Can we supplement what she\u2019s missing, can we find another way?\u201d<\/p>\n

As Natasha and her team work to make the market and their space sustainable for community activities and resources, they\u2019re encouraging clients to come to them. For clients who may be hesitant to gather in the COVID-19 landscape, Natasha says, \u201cit\u2019s time to come in. COVID will stay, it\u2019s another thing we have to have on our list, just like the flu. We know it exists and we need to continue with precautions. But now, it\u2019s [also] mental health awareness and oral care, it\u2019s everything. We are doing the work to inform you of where we are. Come and restore the pieces together.\u201d<\/p>\n

For more information about accessing services, joining programs, or volunteering through Waymakers, visit\u00a0their website<\/a>\u00a0or call 804-920-0059. And Natasha says Waymakers is \u201ca model that I\u2019m hoping others can copy in their own communities. If you can work in an area like Petersburg or Hopewell that I can\u2019t get to, then ask me how I\u2019m doing it, and I\u2019ll share my story so you can help the community on the other side.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, we\u2019re\u00a0spotlighting\u00a0Waymakers Foundation, a food bank, community hub, and\u00a0Health Equity Fund\u00a0recipient that works predominantly with Hispanic and Latino communities in the greater Richmond area. Waymakers founder Natasha Lemus considers trust […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":383,"featured_media":18811,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"modified_by":null,"yoast_head":"\nHealth Literacy and Trustworthiness: Spotlight on Waymakers Foundation - Richmond City Health Department<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.vdh.virginia.gov\/richmond-city\/2023\/10\/23\/waymakers\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Health Literacy and Trustworthiness: Spotlight on Waymakers Foundation - Richmond City Health Department\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Today, we\u2019re\u00a0spotlighting\u00a0Waymakers Foundation, a food bank, community hub, and\u00a0Health Equity Fund\u00a0recipient that works predominantly with Hispanic and Latino communities in the greater Richmond area. 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