To-Jo's Mushrooms, Inc. employees showed off their breast cancer awareness t-shirts at their October 2017 breast cancer education lunch and learn..
By Francis T. Strong
On October 17, 2017, the workers from To-Jo Mushrooms, Inc. filed into their large break room after spending the morning harvesting and packaging crops. Once the employees had settled into their seats, the usually white and grey room had a bright pink hue bouncing off the walls. Each worker donned a breast cancer awareness t-shirt in the trademark color as they prepared for their lunch and an important opportunity to learn about breast health from Chester County Hospital and La Comunidad Hispana.
A greater sense of responsibility comes with being a community-based hospital. Among them, a pro-active approach to addressing the community’s health questions and concerns. That means providers and hospital staff care not only for individuals who walk through the doors of Chester County Hospital, but they can also be found throughout the county. They are in workplaces, houses of worship, and social service agencies. They partner with key people in the public and private sectors, as well as the nonprofit world, to identify problems, answer questions and steer patients to those who can best help them.
For Chester County Hospital, those outreach efforts have been led for two decades by Susan M. Pizzi, MS, RN, Community Health Education coordinator.
“What makes our hospital unique is that we are community based. We feel strongly about the protection of our residents and prevention is a key part of our mission,” Pizzi said. “We know we can’t do it all alone but, working cooperatively, we can help community groups that are dealing with issues such as the opioid crisis, safe kids’ initiatives, or cardiovascular health, for example, by increasing awareness.”
One current partnership, to promote breast health, involves To-Jo Mushroom farm in Avondale, Pennsylvania, and La Comunidad Hispana, a bilingual social service agency founded in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, in 1973. The agency has grown to include health and dental centers, educational classes and job placement.
The hospital, through its Community Health Needs Assessment, and La Comunidad Hispana, have identified that Hispanic women over age 40 are not getting annual mammograms, and because of many barriers including: language issues, limited time, little or no insurance and a lack of awareness on the health issues involved.
“La Comunidad Hispana provided mammograms but needed help bringing awareness into the community,” Pizzi said. “Chester County Hospital had the nurses who could explain the importance of self-examinations, the need for mammograms, and the impact of their lifestyle choices, such as smoking and alcohol intake. Unfortunately, what our team didn’t have was the language skills.”
By working together, the hospital, To-Jo’s, and La Comunidad Hispana tackled all these barriers with a bilingual, lunch-hour program on breast health at the job site in October 2017. La Comunidad Hispana provided the interpreters, To-Jo’s supplied the captive audience and Chester County Hospital brought both the expertise and the culturally appropriate health education materials that the workforce could share with others in their families and community.
“This partnership let us teach the working women, and men, when they were available,” Pizzi said. “The programs are really well-received. They open the door for us, and allow us to let people know what services Chester County Hospital and La Comunidad Hispana offer.”
This was not To-Jo’s first such session. It has a strong, well-established wellness committee, Pizzi noted, and suggestions from employees and hospital staff are taken seriously by the company, both for the lunch-hour programs and the annual wellness day fair.
For Pizzi, every encounter in the community is a chance to broaden the network. Adding partners can lead to more programs and further opportunities to share the hospital’s services and expertise.
“Each partnership opens another door,” Pizzi said. “For example, we had an outreach for Fire Prevention Month. While at this outreach, someone from the Department of Emergency Services invited us to a meeting with a faith-based group and said, ‘Let’s see what we can do.’ Nothing may come of it, but it will allow me to meet other people, find out what they need and introduce them to someone at the hospital who can help.”
About Chester County Hospital
Chester County Hospital was founded in 1892 as the Chester County’s first hospital. Since then, the non-profit has grown into a 248-bed acute-care inpatient facility in West Chester, PA. The hospital also has outpatient services in Exton, West Goshen, West Grove, Kennett Square and New Garden. In 2013, Chester County Hospital became part of Penn Medicine, which is one of the world's leading academic medical centers, dedicated to medical education, biomedical research, and excellent patient care. In addition to quality-driven medical and surgical services, Chester County Hospital also offers home health, inpatient hospice and skilled nursing care; occupational medicine; outpatient laboratory, radiology and physical therapy services; wound care; cardiopulmonary rehab; and a prenatal clinic for the underserved.