About Us
Worcester RISE for Health was founded in May 2023 by Dr Olga Valdman in partnership with and with support of numerous community leaders in Worcester who lead organizations and provide services to refugees and immigrants of Central Massachusetts. Prior to founding RISE, Dr Valdman spent over a decade providing care to newly arriving refugees in Worcester and saw the challenges new arrivals had navigating the system even in settings that tried to be supportive of the population. She firmly believes that what the new arrivals need is a health facility embedded in the community, in an easy to navigate, familiar, trauma-informed space staffed by individuals who themselves were refugees and immigrants and understand and anticipate the challenges newcomers might experience. The vision for RISE is built on these core pillars:
Co-location with community organizations
Culturally and linguistically congruent workforce of refugee and immigrant community health workers (CHWs)
True collaboration with community partners knowledge about each subpopulation
Healthcare providers trained to serve new arrivals with refugee health expertise
Mental health services that incorporate non-traditional/non-talk therapy
Partnership and collaboration with immigration lawyers
The founding Board Chair of RISE - Alex Mooradian, Esq - joined the newly formed organization after years of witnessing the shortcomings of the health system experienced by his refugee and asylum seeking clients.
“Many immigrants and recent arrivals have no meaningful access to appropriate behavioral and physical healthcare due to immigration and insurance status, language barriers, poverty, social differences, and complex trauma histories and medical needs. In fact, many recent arrivals come to the United States after experiencing years of harm and often intentional denial of healthcare by their own governments. They have been persecuted because of who they are, what they believe, who they love, how they pray and the way they appear. RISE for Health, integrating cultural competence into its care from start to finish, is the remedy to a healthcare system that is presently unable to meet the complex needs of recent immigrant and refugee arrivals in Worcester County.”
— Alex Mooradian
