Grant serves as teaching tool
By Scott Mitchell Johnson
Staff Writer
AUGUSTA — Migrant workers in Aroostook County will reap the rewards a Maine Health Access Foundation (MeHAF) grant that will educate them about available health benefits.
MeHAF has awarded a $4,770 grant to the Augusta-based Maine Migrant Health Program, a mobile medical program delivering health care services to migrant workers in the fields and farms across the state. The Maine Migrant Health Program will partner with Milbridge-based Mano en Mano, in a program titled REinFORMA! to create and distribute Spanish and Kreyol language resources for farm workers and family members in Aroostook, Washington and Kennebec counties.
“The money will be used for developing and translating materials related to both changes in federal and state laws and policies for both public health insurance and other entitlements,” said Barbara Ginley, executive director of the Maine Migrant Health Program. “Once those materials are developed, they’ll be integrated into some of the outreach health education and mobile clinics that we do so we can share and disseminate the information with farm workers in the different harvest areas … including Aroostook County.
“Our program does mobile medical services for farm workers while they are here for the major harvest, and we have a team that works in Aroostook County serving workers here for broccoli harvest, primarily, and to a lesser extent folks who are here to plant trees and clear brush,” she said. “We do weekly clinics from July through the middle to end of October for the broccoli workers. As part of the clinics that go on, there’s health education outreach and information sharing and this grant will help provide translated information.”
Ginley said all outreach staff members, which are the first people the migrant workers interact with, are bilingual.
“They’re either Spanish-English or English-Kreyol,” she said. “Without addressing that language need, folks really aren’t able to access much.”
Ginley, who hopes the grant will reach “a couple hundred” farm workers statewide, is very appreciative of the funding.
“To be able to have assistance for material development is a huge benefit to us and the folks we serve,” she said.
