Samford nursing school, BHS help Chandler Mountain migrant workers

Every year April through September, thousands of Hispanic migrant workers travel to Chandler Mountain to work in the tomato fields. And with them comes a field ripe not only with tomatoes.
   
The migrant workers provide a ready-made missions field and the nursing faculty from Samford University recognized that. So with a grant from Baptist Health System (BHS), the Chandler Mountain Project was born.
   
The project provides health care as well as clothing and food drives for the workers.
   
According to Elaine Marshall, assistant professor from the Ida V. Moffett School of Nursing at Samford, the project provides health services to these farm workers in St. Clair County two days per week during the primary growing season.
   
“This summer, BHS conducted two major drives that provided clothes, hygiene articles, gloves, caps and water for the people,” Marshall said.
   
Men’s, women’s and children’s clothes, household items, toiletries and bottled water were in great demand. Many families live in temporary housing without running water.
   
Susan Moore, public relations representative for BHS, worked with a coordinator at each of BHS’ 10 hospitals to organize the drives.
   
BHS collected more than 50 boxes of clothes for those who work in the fields.
   
Workers include both men and women, and toddlers are sometimes in the fields with their parents. The urgent needs included gloves, hats, long pants and long sleeve shirts because of the constant exposure to sun and pesticides.
   
“Our coordinators were great, and I’m so proud of the generosity shown by our employees,” Moore said.
   
One coordinator was Peytonne Childers from the Shelby location.
   
“We had such a good response,” Childers said. “A truck had to come three separate times for items from our hospital. We collected a lot of toiletries, men’s and children’s clothing and work gloves. And we raised about $150 for bottled water for the workers.”
   
The drives were promoted through office e-mail, fliers, signs and boxes in the cafeterias and the public address systems.
   
BHS also donated medical supplies such as needles and bandages for the nursing school to use, and the Mission and Ministries Committee offered financial support.
   
Both Marshall and Jane Martin from Samford’s school of nursing have coordinated the project for the past two summers. In addition to testing blood pressures and blood sugars, the department works with women’s health issues through migrant head start clinics in St. Clair County.
   
“I wrote a grant this summer through the state health department to educate and recruit Hispanic/ Latina migrant women into the breast and cervical cancer early detection program,” Marshall said. “We also trained a Hispanic lay health educator about breast and cervical cancer and with her we conducted two educational classes for the migrant women at the Chandler Mountain Clinic in Oneonta. We conducted pap tests and clinical breast exams on 17 women and referred five women for mammograms.”
   
Marshall and Martin have given educational talks on a Mexican radio show in Oneonta and held a Hispanic health fair in Oneonta.
   
“We provided education on breast and cervical cancer for more than 200 women,” Marshall said. “I hope to repeat a similar project within Jefferson County.”
   
The work by both Samford University’s school of nursing and BHS’ employees and Missions and Ministries Committee have helped feed and clothe about 1,500 migrant workers and meet their medical needs.