Empowering Refugees and Immigrants to Achieve Optimal Health
Providing comprehensive, culturally responsive health care and support services to refugees and immigrants in Worcester, MA and surrounding area.
The mission of Worcester RISE for Health is to build and provide effective, culturally-sensitive, trauma-informed and community-grounded healthcare interventions that eliminate barriers and help refugees and immigrants achieve health equity and self-sufficiency through innovation, co-location, capacity-building and collaboration.
Our vision is to see refugees and immigrants lead healthy and productive lives in the US and thrive physically, emotionally, socially, and economically
Our goal is to provide the following services
Primary care
Prenatal Care
Mental health care
Support groups
Refugee and Immigrant Community Health Workers
Education on health navigation
Language interpretation and translation
Cultural competency training for healthcare providers and other professionals
To achieve this goal we need to renovate our space to create medical offices which would be co-located with the African Community Education program, ORIS, and other refugee serving organizations. To contribute to the capital campaign for medical space creation, please contact us at olga@worcesterrise.org
In the meantime, we are actively supporting new arrivals through culturally and linguistically congruent care coordination and health system navigation.
Currently RISE Community Health workers (CHW) and RISE medical team are supporting approximately 500 migrant arrivals sheltering in hotels of Worcester and surrounding towns. We identify those with medical needs, coordinate with our colleagues in existent healthcare facilities, help families navigate health insurance, get appointments and provide transportation. RISE CHWs speak Haitian-Creole, French and Spanish.
Services that will launch at the beginning of 2024:
Mental health
Trauma informed therapy
Non traditional groups for community building, trauma healing
Trainings, education and network development
Refugee Mental Health education for behavioral health providers in Worcester
Health system navigation education for new arrivals provided by CHWs
Refugee and Immigrant specific CHW training