PHH Service Learning Spotlight: Migrant Farm Workers Clinic

by David Andrew, second year biological sciences major

Upon arrival at the farm that evening, I was most shocked by how incredibly quiet and still it was. On campus, I too often allow myself to be constantly stimulated by noise: the iPod in my ears the moment lecture is over, NPR news streaming during my lunch, YouTube and streaming video dominating my laptop, and falling asleep to the sound of my favorite news podcast. On the farm, there was nothing—I felt like I had stepped into a John Steinbeck novel of a hundred years ago. The migrant farm workers lived in a small cluster of humble metal barracks, situated in a low-lying settlement between darkened rolling hills, agricultural buildings standing tall and shadowed, and all of it just beneath a low, dim evening sky, dominated by ashen clouds. Rain had fallen sporadically that entire afternoon, bringing darkness and the night hours early. The noises I heard didn’t come from ear buds; rather, I heard the sounds of evening, the distant calls of birds beyond the hills, a wooden screen door swinging open and slamming shut, muffled voices and nothing else.

The Migrant Farm Workers Clinic is a program run out of the University of Connecticut Health Center in Farmington with the goal of providing medical and dental screenings for migrant workers, on site, and free of charge. Migrant farm workers “are among the most economically disadvantaged and most medically vulnerable groups in the United States having little, if any, access to health care or medication. In addition to barriers to access to health care that many citizens meet like affordable health insurance, language barriers, and lack of transportation, migrant workers also experience additional barriers such as fear of deportation, loss or garnished wages, and being dismissed or not invited back to work by the employer due to missed work or health issues.” (MFWC Website) Through my INTD courses taken with the Public Health House, I’ve learned about underserved populations and the health disparities they experience as a result of their situation, which shed light on the importance of the services we were providing the workers.

The entire clinic staff is made up of volunteers, ranging from physicians donating their time, to undergraduates like myself seeking out clinical exposure and service opportunities. As an undergraduate, I was tasked with collecting vitals data from patients, their first stop within the clinic before seeing a medical student. My fellow undergrads and I were trained in the use of sphygmomanometers (super fun word for blood pressure cuffs), which we used to acquire blood pressure readings for each patient, along with their blood glucose levels through a thumb prick test. We would then discuss the results of each test with the patient and explain the meaning of each result, such as whether their blood pressure was right on target, a little high, or “pretty high”, as I would tentatively put it. I was lucky in that the patients we were working with on this occasion were English-speaking, which is often not the case. The lack of a prominent language barrier made communication much easier, though effective patient communication is a genuine skill that takes extensive training and practice to develop. In addition to taking vitals, we also shadowed the medical students and other clinic staff as they saw patients and decided on treatment.

I have never had the opportunity to work so closely with patients and actually provide them services, and it was a transformative experience. In the seat next to me, whose arm I held in a sphygmomanometer, was a real person with sincere needs. The clinic was literally set up in the common space of the workers’ barracks (right next to the kitchen), right in the home of need, in the home of underserved and ignored men and women. We saw a dozen patients that night, patients who walked away with their stories heard, pains acknowledged and diagnosed, and their needs—in some small part, and to some small but meaningful extent—addressed.

The migrant farm workers are an invisible population—they come and go, with Connecticut none the wiser. Later that night, we left the farm behind and returned to the Connecticut I know, with its lights, traffic, noise and modern concerns. It had taken only thirty minutes to enter a whole new world, and leave the world of the migrant farm workers behind. That world doesn’t cease to exist, however, and neither does the need for care and attention. Someday, I’ll return.