Migrant Farmworkers & Homeless Outreach

Shenandoah Community Health’s Special Populations Department has over 45 years of combined experience coordinating visits to migrant camps and sites where the homeless gather.  Our outreach team consists of nurses, bilingual outreach workers, and drivers who support this high risk and underserved population.

Special Populations’ goal is to reduce barriers to care, ensure access to care and improve services and coordinated healthcare by collecting documentation such as nursing assessments, demographics, and health screening intakes from migrant camps, homeless and other outreach sites to populate an electronic health record for each patient. We provide free nursing assessments, case management, health education, as well as referrals for medical, dental, and behavioral healthcare to agricultural workers and the homeless. We also work with the growers, health departments, churches, shelters and homeless coalitions to help identify anyone who could benefit from our services.

To reduce barriers to care, Shenandoah Community Health’s Special Populations Department provides:

• free interpretation services in Spanish, French, and Haitian Creole at the health center, the fields of agricultural workers, in the shelters, and sites where homeless gather
• telephone interpretation services and translation of documents in Spanish
• patient advocacy and assistance with sliding fee, prescriptions, billing, laboratory and x-ray services
• free transportation services for agricultural workers and their families, and homeless who do not have transportation, to get to our center or referral sites
• free on-site health education in English, Spanish and Haitian Creole to migrants on topics such as ergonomics, first aid, and sexually transmitted diseases

We provide outreach to ensure access to healthcare at 28 migrant camps located throughout Berkeley, Jefferson, and Morgan Counties in West Virginia, Winchester, Virginia and adjoining counties, and Big Pool, Washington County, Maryland. In addition, Special Populations provides outreach to seven sites where homeless gather in Martinsburg, WV.