Let's start from the beginning

Dear Friends and Family,

I've been meaning to get on this blog action for quite a while now, but never got around to doing it. So, finally, I sat down at a book store in my town of Vancouver, WA, and decided to write down some notes for y'all to peruse.

Last week, my fellow Washington Community Health Corps (AmeriCorps) members and I kicked off our 2010-2011 service year. After some ice-breakers, HR trainings, taco-truck lunches and exploring the community the 16 of us went off to our separate sites throughout the state of Washington, and throughout this organization.


I can't even begin to tell you how awesome SeaMar Community Health Centers (CHCs), and everyone who works there, truly are. Also, there are no words that can describe the amazing individuals who have chosen to work with the SeaMar AmeriCorps Program. These people have been all over the world, walked many miles, and helped many people in their young lives, and have much more ahead of them. I was really in awe of what these ladies and gentlemen have accomplished, and with what tremendous excitement and passion they were filled before the start of our year.

That was last week. The past two days my partner in crime, Elisa, and I started at our respective Vancouver sites. We met our mentors and supervisor, as well as toured the city in the afternoon. Throughout the last two days I've felt extremely welcome all throughout the organization, and very excited to start working with the actual clinic clients.

Vancouver, surprisingly to me, has a huge Russian and Ukrainian population. I hear Russian in the Starbucks, and the farmers market. Ukrainians were all over Target and Wallgreens. The clinic I am at has a Russian nurse, a Russian physician's assistant, Ukrainian community health worker in the W.I.C. department and a Ukrainian receptionist. But, with all these people being great resources and support for the Russian/Ukrainian clients, many brochures, signs and powerpoints have stupid language errors. "Service provier" (ie. doctors, nurses etc.) just doesn't translate as "поставщик услуг"(supplier of services), which makes me think of my uncle who works for a large grocery store chain in Ukraine supplying them with different perfumes and cleaning products... in other words, I've got my work cut out for me.

My projects, as far as I can imagine now will be the following:

• To some extent following up with previous AmeriCorps member's work with diabetes and smoking cessation initiatives by catching and educating patients while they wait for their medical appointments and referring them to the Health Educator and the Chronic Care Manager
  
• Bringing focus back to women's health issues, including but not limited to encouraging Well Woman checks and mammograms, and referring uninsured women to the Washington Breast, Cervical and Colon Health Program, which should cover annual preventative care examinations and screenings.
  
• Following up with the Russian-speaking refugee assistance program, and providing them with "Healthcare 101" education classes in order to introduce them to the US healthcare system, as well as walk them through the medical aspect of naturalization and green card services (yes, this is where that awful PowerPoint I tried to edit comes in)
• Walking group with our Health Educator on Wednesday mornings. Super stoked!
  
• I've also began networking with the Planned Parenthood clinic and the Maternal Health Services and W.I.C. people to see what we can do to outreach to the many many many many teens with babies that are living in Vancouver. That should be a very exciting project for me to get into. So we'll see what comes out of it.

Well, that should about sum it up for now.

I'm really getting into this work, and hope that these projects will get up and running soon. I almost wanted to start talking to patients today, but I forgot my badge, and honestly, I could probably use a little more training. I don't even know where they keep pens around that place!

So, here you guys go. Now, keep tuning in once in a while so you can, as my oh so clever blog address suggests, see Mar in SeaMar.

Love, Maryna.

P.S. Oh yes, I am so clever! I know!