In June of 2018, a new collective was introduced to the CCATE community—The Health Circle. The Health Circle includes around twenty teachers, parents, students, and other volunteers within the community and is an open concept collective that allows members to discuss the health of the CCATE community. The main goal of the collective is to strive for equity in health access within the Latinx immigrant community of CCATE and Norristown. The collective members hope that all members of the immigrant community can see them as allies, friends, and support systems.
In the future, the Health Circle hopes to conduct more research that will be able to serve the community and tailor to specific needs within. Members are currently in the process of creating a census that will be able to specifically assess the needs of the CCATE community with questions created by members of the collective to best reflect the community. The collective conducted a pilot program with the census that included twenty-five families from CCATE in order to test the reliability and community’s willingness to participate.
In addition to the census, the collective would also like to conduct a more general health survey that can observe community access to health care and more general health needs. This survey is considered more confidential and is taken anonymously by volunteering community members. It asks about more personal topics, including trauma, mental and emotional health, sexual health, drug and substance use or abuse, and experiences as an immigrant. The goal was to upgrade this project in 2020 in order to reach more families and fully assess community needs in order to create programs specifically for members of CCATE.
Due to the pandemic, some of the collective goals have been put on hold or have been difficult to complete efficiently. Last fall, the collective was able to regroup and decided to focus on COVID relief and assistance for the community. The census has since been moved online to provide more comfort and accommodate any health needs due to the pandemic. There has also been a new initiative of distributing healthy food to the community. Caitlin Brady, a leader of the Health Circle, states that the distribution program is “for the community from the community, with love.” She has played a huge role in helping to develop the Health Circle and make sure that it is effectively serving members of the CCATE community. She emphasizes that the collective is a huge group effort and is in place to build trust and knowledge within the community. The collective also plans to create an informational video to inform the community about the group and their main efforts. Lastly, the general health survey has also been moved to Facebook and now includes new questions regarding the ongoing pandemic.
*ALL PICTURES WERE TAKEN BEFORE THE PANDEMIC. MEETINGS HAVE SINCE BEEN VIRTUAL.*