Valerie Carter MD works as a hospitalist in Internal Medicine at Froedtert Hospital in Milwaukee. The job has its challenges on a regular day: determining the right treatments for severely ill patients and keeping them calm during uncertainty. But in the middle of a pandemic, Carter’s job has become drastically harder because she also has to manage her own anxiety. “It was a whole different ball game when this started because we didn’t know what this was and what the right treatments would be,” says Carter.
Community Organizing Through Food
David Boucher and Stephanie Shipley are celebrating 14 years of connecting people through food with Amaranth Bakery and Café. The pair always shared a love for community organizing and knew that food has a way of bringing cultures together. In 2000, they bought the rundown building at 3329 W. Lisbon Ave. with the intention of building a public meeting space in a neighborhood that needed more access to public places.
The bakery was founded on an idea that change can happen in a community if people are given a space that allows them to feel comfortable and interact with one another. From the beginning, the café was meant to help ideas grow. That’s why the seating area consists mostly of large tables which organically allow people to start conversations. Movements and local initiatives happen through relationship building, explains Boucher, and “none of this happens without trust.”
As their budding business developed, so did their food and Shipley’s knowledge of baking. “I feel like this place created me as the baker, as the food person,” she says, as someone who never had experience in baking previous to the café. She was first inspired by the large red plant she saw being grown by her neighboring Hmong gardeners. “The amaranth plants that grew in the community gardens were strong, anchored and unwilted,” says Boucher. Shipley’s research of the plant led her to discover the many cultures that have a history of cultivating it. That helped her realize the importance food and crops hold in different ethnicities and religions.
So, she intentionally built the menu to be inclusive and healthy. Even though Shipley is vegetarian, she makes a point to add meat into their hearty vegetable-filled soups because meat is so valued in the culture of the neighborhood. By simply adding meat to her soups, she gets more people to try something they wouldn’t normally eat.
Their menu has adapted over the years because of the people from various cultures that they’ve invited into their café. Boucher and Shipley have made a point to hire people wanting to learn the trade who bring their own perspectives on food. By being willing to take extra time to teach those with less experience, the couple, in return, learns from their workforce. They also support neighborhood businesses and budding entrepreneurs who help develop new products that the couple otherwise wouldn’t have thought of. The support they’ve offered has not only created an open safe space in the café, it’s also built up the surrounding neighborhood. Boucher and Shipley view the world in very different ways, but their goal has always been the same: Empower the people in the neighborhood so they can improve their community as well as their own well-being.
Learn more at facebook.com/amaranthbakerycafe. Read this article on the Shepherd Express, part of the column “Hero of the Week.”
Bread of Healing Clinic Finds Solutions for Health Care
About 20 years ago, Rick Cesar was working as a nurse in the Aurora Sinai Emergency Room, treating patients that often had no reason to seek care in an emergency room except for the fact that they had no insurance. The sad truth was that the ER was their only option for medical care, which is still the case for many people today. In the same hospital, Cesar knew a doctor, Tom Jackson, and a residency student, Barbara Horner-Ibler, who were both frustrated with the treatment system they were a part of.
Cesar, Jackson and Horner-Ibler watched as patients came in to the hospital to be treated for an illness, temporarily recovered from their symptoms, were discharged with a prescription and would start the process all over again a few months later. These patients would not be cured; they were simply sent off with a quick fix. If patients do have health care, their level of care is dictated by what their insurance covers, which often limits follow-up appointments and other necessary treatments like behavior health assessments. These three health care providers came together to find a solution to these problems and make health care more accessible to those who cannot afford it.
In 2000, Cesar, Jackson and Horner-Ibler co-founded the Bread of Healing Clinic (1821 N. 16th St., in the basement of Cross Lutheran Church) with help from partners including Aurora Health Care and United Way. Although the clinic has grown to treat almost 2,000 patients and accommodate around 6,800 visits per year in three locations, it started much smaller. In the beginning, Cesar was stationed as a parish nurse at Cross Lutheran Church and began seeing a few patients a week to keep them out of the ER for needs like removing stitches and checking vitals after starting a new drug. Horner-Ibler then joined Cesar and prescribed medications to patients. She would leave her credit card on file at the pharmacy so that when patients went to fill their prescriptions, the pharmacist knew to put the bill on her credit card. Jackson became the medical director, and the clinic grew quickly with the needs of their patients.
At Bread of Healing, they consider themselves to be an integrated health provider, understanding that an illness comes from medical, social and behavioral problems. That is why all their patients interact with someone from their social work, behavioral health and medical team that are available at every location. But there’s more to health than that; there’s hope, explains Michele Cohen, the clinic’s behavioral health director. “I hold hope when other people can’t hold it for themselves, and that’s what this place is,” she says. “I’ve learned how much of a difference we can make in someone’s life by just listening, by just telling them the truth.”
The clinic’s health care providers are used to their patients telling them that no one cares about them, that they have been forgotten. These are fellow citizens of this city that feel alienated. Bread of Healing was founded to show Milwaukee’s underinsured that “you need hope, and somebody does care,” states Cesar. “You have to be willing to accept people and understand you are not the one doing the favor. You’re going to learn more from people than anything. And if you can have a heart that’s open, and you can encourage caregivers to do that, it’s going to make them better practitioners and provide better care to the patients.”
View the article on the Shepherd Express website, part of my regular Hero of the Week column.
CORE El Centro
Our current health care system is complex, difficult to navigate, and inaccessible to people with limited funds and recourses. Especially for people from different cultural backgrounds, these challenges can feel impossible to overcome. But CORE El Centro understands health differently. To them, health is an elaborate web of pieces that we must tie together to be our best selves and that starts with a safe space to practice healing. When co-founders Jayne Ader and Madeline Gianforte started CORE El Centro 16 years ago, they saw a need for an understanding of healing and access to health services in the community. “People have this innate wisdom about their path and each path is different. So how do we help you find that,” says Ader. Their goal is to inspire individuals and families to achieve optimal health by offering affordable services in both English and Spanish.
co-founders Jayne Ader and Madeline Gianforte
CORE El Centro treats members of the community that have limited access to health care due to low income, language barriers, cultural barriers and other factors. Most of the organization’s clients are Latino, but anyone is welcome for treatment. Their ability to connect with clients through language and culture is what makes CORE El Centro unique. When a client first visits the building, they meet with a staff member called a health navigator, who discusses their health concerns, problems at home, and general troubles to truly understand the factors impacting their health. “They can really connect with what you are going through,” says Carla Del Pozo, director of the Integrative Health and Wellness program. These health navigators are able place the client with the best possible practitioners because they are trained community health workers and people from the community. In order to heal someone, CORE believes you must first get to know them and understand where their pain originated from.
The organization is built with four main programs: Integrated Health and Wellness, Gardening and Nutrition, Children’s Wellness and Volunteers. They offer one-on-one sessions in therapies such as acupuncture and massage, as well as courses like reiki, yoga, gardening and nutrition. CORE El Centro has also built strong relationships over years with their partners, such as Aurora Walker’s Point Clinic, The Healing Center and others. These close relationships allow CORE to confidently refer clients who are in need of different healing services than what they offer. “Part of the mission is building community,” explains Ader. “By building community, you also heal.” When people are given access to health care through language, cost and community members that understand their needs, people are able to better themselves and give back to their community.
View the article on the Shepherd Express website, part of my regular Hero of the Week column.