UVA Health Community Health Worker Ana Zuniga
Read the full article on UVA Health Connect.
“The ED team noticed a lot of people were coming through without being screened for social drivers,” explains Betsy Peyton, RN, BSN, Director, Clinical Care Services, WellAware Community Health Worker Program within UVA Health Department of Population Health. “They saw it as a lost opportunity to offer resources to those patients to help remove their barriers to better healthcare.”
Peyton and team began collaborating with ED leaders, Sarah Wendel, MD, MBA, and Nardos Makonnen, MD, to determine the best way to screen patients within a busy ED environment for SDoH and connect them with the immediate, practical resources they needed to stay healthy and access available services. Additional goals: reduce admissions and no-shows to clinic appointments.
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For the first few weeks of the pilot, CHW Ana Zuniga screened patients in person. But she soon moved to phone-based follow-ups — boosting the number of patients she could reach by 25 percent. Between June and early September, Zuniga contacted 236 total patients and completed 187 total SDoH screenings. During that time, Zuniga, who is fluent in Spanish, personally accompanied eight patients to a food bank and enrolled seven patients in WellAware for ongoing follow-up.
“Ana found that housing, social connections, and financial risk were some of the biggest themes,” Peyton explains. “Having one designated person whose job it is to get this done is making a difference, and Ana really goes the extra mile.”
Dr. Makonnen adds: “Ana’s exceptional ability to connect with patients enables her to identify their unique challenges and coordinate meaningful support through the population health team.”
Sarah K. Wendel, MD, MBAMedical Director, Emergency Department
