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1 year ago
In a Wealthy County, Uninsured Patients Struggle with Grief and Trauma. This Therapist Helps Them Heal.
The father of three was finding it difficult to manage without his wife.
He and his children were grieving her recent death. But on top of that, she had been the one who did the cooking, who helped the kids get ready in the morning.
For marriage and family therapist Virginia Moreno, who treats people experiencing bereavement and trauma in Santa Barbara County, California, this wasn’t a problem that could be solved in the clinic. So she did what she so often does: She took extra steps to help her patient cope, in this case teaching the widowed father how to cook a few simple dishes, brush his daughter’s hair, and make the beds.
“You just go that extra mile, because there were three surviving children,” Moreno said. “We did all the survival skills.”
For nearly 14 years, Moreno has worked as a clinical therapist at the nonprofit Hospice of Santa Barbara, working with patients who have lost loved ones. The care she provides is often relatively short-term, focused on helping patients process their grief and build coping skills to help them continue on.
Now Moreno will be providing bereavement therapy at the Savie Clinic, a free clinic in north Santa Barbara County, in addition to her work for Hospice of Santa Barbara. There, she’ll work with as many as 50 patients confronting trauma or grief. The expansion of her work was funded through the Community Routes: Access to Mental Health Care program, a partnership with Teva Pharmaceuticals, the National Association of Free and Charitable Clinics, and Direct Relief. Savie Clinic received $150,000 over two years to expand their mental health services and outreach.
“It’s being able to provide a safe place for clients to share their stories, without judgment, without added stress,” she said. “You’re creating a safety net and [they know] that there’s someone who’s interested in walking this path with them.”
Moreno didn’t always plan on being a bereavement therapist. She went to college expecting to become a private investigator. But then she took a psychology class, and fell in love. She also saw a high need for mental health services in her Latino community, and was concerned about the stigma she saw community members holding toward psychology and mental health care.
“I thought, ‘Maybe if I look like them and talk like them, I can help them,’” she recalled. “I felt a yearning and a calling for that.”
Santa Barbara County is famous for its natural beauty and elaborate mansions, but the area is rife with inequity and income disparities, particularly in the northern part of the county, which has historically had little in the way of affordable health care.
That changed in 2022, when physician Ahmad Nooristani saw the extraordinary need for medical services in north Santa Barbara County, and founded Savie Clinic in the city of Lompoc, to provide free health care for uninsured patients.
Savie’s leaders first became aware of the urgent need for bereavement therapy in their community when a young patient died suddenly from an illness last year. As Savie’s staff worked to organize support for the boy’s family, they began to hear other stories of patients losing family members suddenly, whether from murder, suicide, car accidents, or natural causes.
“Hearing more of these stories made my hope to partner with Hospice increase,” said former Savie executive director Eryn Shugart, who is now a grant writer, in an email to Direct Relief.
Shugart said Moreno was a natural choice to provide the expanded services: “She is bilingual and bicultural, and 90% of our patients speak Spanish only. She is also an excellent and experienced clinician.”
For Moreno, it was an opportunity to bring an essential treatment to an underserved population.
“I was excited because I know that north county doesn’t get a lot of services,” she explained. “We don’t turn anyone away.”
But the care itself is familiar. “The subject is the same. It’s death and dying,” Moreno said. “This is what grief looks like…They’re brave enough to come in and fall apart, and then pull themselves together again.”
In Moreno’s experience, many members of Santa Barbara County’s Spanish-speaking population need mental health care, but they’re afraid of reaching out, and aware of the stigma. Part of her work is helping her patients understand and process the fear they’re feeling. “Whatever emotions you’re feeling, it’s normal,” she tells patients.
Ultimately, Moreno’s goal is to give the people who seek her help the tools they need to work through grief, trauma, and other emotional pain in their lives.
“They’re going to learn coping skills,” she said. “So when they get triggered, or they feel like the world is falling apart, they’re going to draw on their coping skills.”
1 year ago
Hurricane Debby, California Wildfire Responses Remain at the Forefront
In the past week, Direct Relief delivered 484 shipments of requested medical aid to 45 U.S. states and territories and 21 countries worldwide. Included is support for communities impacted by Hurricane Debby in Florida and continued wildfire response in California.
These shipments contained 12 million defined daily doses of medication and supplies, including prenatal vitamins, diabetes therapies, rare disease treatments, oncology medications, field medic packs for first responders, and more.
After Debby’s landfall in Florida’s Big Bend region on Monday, the storm was downgraded from a Category 1 hurricane to a tropical storm, and then had a second landfall early Thursday, bringing tornadoes, flooding, and power outages.
On Monday, the Florida Association of Community Health Centers reported at least 71 health centers experienced partial or full closure due to Hurricane Debby. In response to Debby, Virgina B. Andes Volunteer Community Clinic, a free clinic in Port Charlotte, Florida, reported opening their Hurricane Preparedness Pack to access chronic disease medications for impacted patients.
The packs are staged in hurricane-prone areas across the U.S. Gulf Coast in advance of Atlantic Hurricane season at the start of each year and contain medical essentials commonly requested after storms.
Direct Relief also recently supported Virginia B. Andes in 2022, after the clinic was hit by Hurricane Ian. This week, Direct Relief shipped requested chronic disease medications and personal care items to the clinic to support their work with patients.
Shipments also departed this week to the University of Florida Mobile Outreach Clinic, which has been providing care for agricultural workers and other community members impacted by the storm in the Gainesville area. The Way Free Medical Clinic in the Jacksonville area also received Direct Relief support, and the Neighborhood Medical Center in the Tallahassee area received diabetes management supplies, medical consumables, and other requested items this week.
As more health facilities come online, Direct Relief expects more requests for support and will continue to respond.
Wildfire response in Northern California is ongoing as the Park Fire, which is currently about one-third contained, continues to rage north of Sacramento.
Last weekend, Direct Relief staff traveled to the region to deliver requested medical aid, including to facilities in Butte County, where the 2018 Camp Fire killed 85 people and destroyed thousands of structures in the Paradise area. Direct Relief staff delivered aid last week to Butte County Public Health’s warehouse, partly funded by Direct Relief, which will eventually be used to consolidate medical supplies in a single location to increase efficiency.
Staff also met with Butte County Search and Rescue, an all-volunteer team that provided door-to-door evacuation notices, mapping support, and coordination efforts with the sheriff’s office during the Park Fire. They also housed 20 firefighters in their training center during the Park Fire response.
Their Rescue 3 vehicle was funded by Direct Relief and has been used as a model for other SAR teams across the state. Each of their response vehicles will now have an emergency medical backpack with medical essentials for triage care.
Medical supplies were also delivered to Shingletown Medical Center and Ampla Health’s health centers in Magalia, Gridley, and Los Molinos.
More wildfire response kits, which contain medical essentials commonly requested during fires, including respiratory and ophthalmic medications and N95 masks, are currently being built and will ship out next week for Butte County Public Health and community health centers in the area.
WORLDWIDE
Over the last week, Direct Relief shipped more than 10.9 million defined daily doses of medication to countries outside the U.S. that include the following:
UNITED STATES
Direct Relief delivered 449 shipments containing 1.1 million doses of medication during the past seven days to organizations, including the following:
YEAR TO DATE
Since January 1, 2024, Direct Relief has delivered 15,300 shipments to 2,068 partner organizations in 54 U.S. states and territories and 83 countries.
These shipments contained 281.9 million defined daily doses of medication valued at $911.7 million (wholesale) and totaled 3.5 million pounds.
