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Welcome to “Paying it Forward,” a monthly interview series made possible by Piedmont Health. In this series, we hear from the folks at Piedmont about the importance of community health centers – and why they chose a career in community health.
This month, Aaron welcomes a mother-daughter team: Sandra Benitez and Keila Vasquez, who both work at Piedmont’s community health center in Siler City. Keila is a care manager and Sandra is an administrative assistant in the WIC department, where she’s worked for nearly two decades.
“It’s helping people,” Sandra says of what makes the WIC program special. “It’s knowing that we’re making a difference every day.”
She says she experiences that feeling of making a difference on a daily basis. “Last night I had a mom come in,” she remembers. “Her husband lost his job and they were struggling. She didn’t think she was going to be able to go right after her appointment to get fruits and vegetables and food for her babies…and it made me feel like it was worth the day, after I saw her crying and how grateful she was.”
Her daughter Keila is now at the Siler City location as well, working as a care manager – which involves working with all types of patients, from kids to senior citizens.
“I like to say we dabble in a lot of areas,” she says of her work. “There’s a lot of need within our community – and some people don’t tell their doctors, they don’t tell anyone. They just harbor it. And we’re the people who find that, who try to help these people deal with that stress. Because a lot of people don’t realize stress can impact a person’s health. Maybe that’s the thing that’s preventing them from actually feeling better.”
Keila Vasquez and her fellow care managers achieve that with a screener called SDOH, or Social Determinants of Health – followed by targeted action to connect people to available resources.
“Sometimes a patient seems fine, but then you find out they don’t have food for tonight,” she says of the screener process. “And from there, as long as you build rapport (and) show kindness, people are open to telling you these things. (And) even if they’ve been to the clinic, they (may not) realize there are resources out there.”
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