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Health advice available at Palatine Opportunity Center

More than a dozen social service agencies share space at the Palatine Opportunity Center in an effort to serve its at-risk and underserved population.

Earlier this year, a new member set up shop: Rose Jensen, a registered nurse from the Healthcare Outreach department of Northwest Community Hospital.

Kathy Millin, executive director of the center, said a grant from the Chicago Community Trust allowed the center to contract with Northwest Community for Jensen's services, which she describes herself as serving as a resource between on-site services and the emergency room.

"We knew we needed a special person," Millin says, "one who could speak Spanish and had experience teaching health care."

Jensen, she says, fit the bill. For more than 10 years, the native of South America served as the nurse manager of the Police Neighborhood Resource Center in Rolling Meadows.

Jensen says the majority of people she serves at the Palatine Opportunity Center are Latino, just as they were in Rolling Meadows, only the numbers are far greater.

In fact, Millin says that in the six months since Jensen began, she has impacted more than 900 clients, through nutrition and health classes, small group encounters and private sessions.

The numbers have been so positive that Northwest Community officials see the program as a prototype they're hoping to duplicate in communities that open resource centers, possibly in Mount Prospect, Prospect Heights and Wheeling.

"As the clinics become more and more crowded, and the immigration population continues to grow, we're seeing a real need for it," says Karen Baker, of the hospital's Healthcare Outreach department. "Rose is definitely a model that we're going to continue."

Jensen has embraced her role.

"I never saw myself in community nursing," says Jensen, a Rolling Meadows resident. "You're not exposed to it a lot in nursing school. But especially now, in this time we're in, with shortened visits in the hospital, and with people losing their jobs and access to health care, there's just so much more I can do with large groups.

"I can reach more people," she says simply.

Often, Jensen is called to counsel patients about their health after they have been seen at the neighboring Vista Health Clinic. She also gives advice on well baby care and nutrition to mothers, while providing support to families on basic health care concerns.

An initiative Jensen started last spring was a Girls' Club, to work in small groups with fifth and sixth graders, providing an informal setting to talk about important health topics.

Her biggest area, however, has been to counsel people about diabetes, including at-risk children and adults diagnosed with the disease.

"Diabetes is very prevalent in the Latino community," Jensen says. "We're trying to prevent it from becoming an epidemic."

Elisa Castanon of Palatine was one of those adults diagnosed with diabetes. However, she knew little about the disease.

After attending classes and talking to Jensen about managing her disease, she was asked to serve as a "promotor de salud," or promoter of health to other adults in the community.

"I pass information to them from what I have learned, especially about food and cooking," Castanon says. "If I have questions, I go to Rose."

Jensen describes Castanon's transition as empowering, and ultimately that is what she is dispensing as much as education and medicine.

Not only has Castanon taken ownership of her health care, she now is working on earning her General Equivalency Diploma, and is studying to take the U.S. citizenship test.

"My goal is one of education and prevention," Jensen says, "and to empower people as much as possible."

New outreach nurse Rose Jenson discusses maintaining a heathy diet at Palatine Opportunity Center. George LeClaire | Staff Photographer
Elisa Castanon, of the Palatine Opportunity Center, left, talks about how much she has learned about diabetes and the importance of diet from outreach nurse Rose Jenson. She now teaches others. George LeClaire | Staff Photographer
Elisa Castanon, of the Palatine Opportunity Center, left, talks about how much she has learned about diabetes and the importance of diet from outreach nurse Rose Jenson. She now teaches others. George LeClaire | Staff Photographer
New outreach nurse Rose Jenson discusses maintaining a heathy diet at Palatine Opportunity Center in Palatine. George LeClaire | Staff Photographer
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