The Community Health Awareness Network (CHAN) was founded to educate and empower low-income African immigrants in the greater Worcester-area, and its executive director, Lovo Koliego-Narmah is providing the care based on her own personal experiences.

 

Koliego-Narmah is a registered nurse from Liberia. She saw firsthand the limitations that immigrants face due to less understanding of social customs as well as limited English proficiency.

 

“There has been a lot of need within the African immigrant community that I have noticed,” Koliego-Narmah said. “CHAN was founded to help, maybe to not entirely bridge the gap since we’re a small organization but to provide a lot of awareness within the African immigrant community as far as health is concerned.”

 

Koliego-Narmah said that the organization is educating members of the community about issues such as diabetes, hypertension, and cancer. They discuss the importance of risk factors associated with these chronic diseases as well as early detection through screening tests of potential problems. 

 

“Our goal is to educate as many people within the community as possible and to encourage members of the community at their unwell visits to be able to ask questions to their primary care provider,” Koliego-Narmah said. “One thing I noticed is that we don’t ask these questions because we’re not aware of what’s going on. Knowledge is power.”

 

Koliego-Narmah had already had a background in nursing from Liberia, so she had an idea of health conditions herself. She went back to nursing school and continued to work in a variety of settings. Now, she is at the University of Massachusetts.

 

She has come across a lot of people who do not understand the situations that they’re in. Her mom, for example, who also lives here must go to doctor visits with Koliego-Narmah. 

 

“She doesn’t know how to ask the questions,” Koliego-Narmah said. “She doesn’t understand because of the language barrier. Those are all the things we see. We try to bridge the gap by educating people of what is out there.”

 

Koliego-Narmah said that resources are often made available to other ethnicities and groups within the area, but oftentime immigrants are left to struggle and navigate the health system themselves.

 

Covid-19 also added an additional challenge. Koliego-Narmah said that CHAN reached out to the community and tried to educate people even more so. She said that as a nurse, she would see what was happening firsthand. The others though within the community wouldn’t understand as well, since they were told to stay at home and not interact and see what was taking place.

 

“There has always been a need, but with Covid, it just pushes everything to another level,” Koliego-Narmah said. “We were all afraid. Nobody knew what was happening. We had to prevent it.”

 

Worcester is one of the largest communities for immigrants in general, Koliego-Narmah said, so the work that she and CHAN do ensures that everyone is able to benefit from the services available. 

 

“It starts in the city we live in, the government that we’re part of, the state, and so on,” Koliego-Narmah said. “Wherever we are, we work to help any and everybody. Where there’s a need and we can be a part of it to help, we can.”

 

Koliego-Narmah is now serving as part of the Worcester Region Chamber of Commerce’s seventh annual Leadership Worcester class. 

 

“I see it as a great opportunity,” Koliego-Narmah said. “It has served as an eye-opener for me to get to know the community even more.”

 

She said that hearing the stories of people knowing what to do when they go to the doctors and the questions to ask. She is empowering people to take back their own health care, and it is a steady change that she is moving positively.

 

“One of my major things is to see a healthy community,” Koliego-Narmah said. “Once you have a healthy community, I think that’s work because people who are strong and healthy want to be able to work. That helps cover a bit of poverty and help people to become more financially independent.”

 

To learn more information about CHAN, go to changlobal.org.

 

“I think people need to know there’s a need for awareness on this end,” Koliego-Narmah said.