As a community health worker, Scarlet Pujols Recio, who speaks both English and Spanish, helps to connect patients with the resources they need (such as housing, food, and transportation) to overcome their current challenges and improve their wellness. ‘People generally feel safe when they talk to me; they know I’m not going to judge them,’ she says.

The Wright Center for Community Health hosts Pujols Recio as she completes a program to become a certified community health worker – an in-demand occupation in U.S.

Dominican-born Scarlet Pujols Recio first showed signs that she was destined to work in health care at about 6 years old, using parts from an ink pen to pretend to give IV fluids to her Barbie doll.

Now 23, Pujols Recio remains driven to heal, but she has advanced from daydreaming about relieving people’s pain to actually working to improve the lives of Northeast Pennsylvania residents, including some of her Luzerne County neighbors.

The Hazleton Area High School graduate today serves with the AmeriCorps-funded National Health Corps (NHC) as a community health worker, or CHW, a role in which she improves access to health care by breaking down cultural and other common barriers.

She is based at The Wright Center for Community Health Scranton Practice, which currently serves as a host site for Pujols Recio and another AmeriCorps NHC member, 23-year-old Jullie Makhoul, as they complete a program that will prepare them to become certified CHWs.

The year-long program is part of the national response to the COVID-19 pandemic to boost America’s number of community health workers. It is administered locally through the Northeast Pennsylvania Area Health Education Center and made possible through the participation of the AmeriCorps NHC and Pennsylvania’s Commonwealth Civilian Coronavirus Corps, or CCCC.

Community health workers are a key part of today’s health care teams, because they help to bridge the gap between practitioners – including time-strapped doctors and nurses – and the patients most in need of assistance. CHWs act as patient advocates and are often deeply embedded members of the communities they serve, enabling them to quickly open lines of communication and build trust.

“People generally feel safe when they talk to me; they know I’m not going to judge them,” says Pujols Recio, who is fluent in both English and Spanish. “I’m here to help.”

Pujols Recio assists with language translation in The Wright Center’s primary care practices and aboard its mobile medical clinic improving not only the exchange of important information but also the quality of patient care.

She also aids patients as they navigate the process of signing up for health insurance or food assistance. And, much like a social worker, she devotes parts of each workday to connecting certain patients and their families to community organizations that offer hot meals, housing programs, and other services and resources they need to overcome their current challenges and improve their wellness.

“I didn’t know there were so many resources out there until I began my training at The Wright Center,” says Pujols Recio. She can now rattle off a list of area nonprofits ranging from A (Area Agency on Aging) to Z … or at least U (United Neighborhood Centers).

About once a week, Pujols Recio heads to a Luzerne County destination as part of a traveling Wright Center team that treats patients inside a mobile medical vehicle. The vehicle, known as Driving Better Health, reaches people close to where they live, learn, and work.

In Greater Hazleton, for example, stopovers for the vehicle have included the Dominican House of Hazleton, the Hazleton One Community Center, and public-school buildings. As Pujols Recio explains, it’s part of an effort to make sure people of all ages have access to COVID-19 vaccines and testing, and that school-age and other children are receiving their routine childhood immunizations to prevent polio, measles, and other diseases.

“Our Driving Better Health vehicle,” she says, “is having an impact everywhere we go.”

“You also have to know your boundaries,” she adds, echoing the mantra of her supervisor at The Wright Center. “Boundaries are very important because you don’t want to enable your patients. You want to give them the resources so they can help themselves.”

Pujols Recio and her fellow AmeriCorps NHC member, Makhoul, formerly of Allentown, began learning the dos and don’ts of community health workers during the classroom portion of their training.

As participants in the Northeast Pennsylvania Area Health Education Center’s state-accredited program for CHWs, they were instructed on the core competencies of the job. Each woman completed 75 hours of class time, exploring topics such as chronic disease, preventive care, health literacy, and how to build and maintain relationships.

Each is now amassing the required 2,000 hours of on-site work experience required before an individual in Pennsylvania can apply to become a certified CHW.

Makhoul, who speaks Arabic, might stay at The Wright Center after completing her required hours in April, joining the organization for a while as a full-time, paid employee.

The recent college graduate is currently completing an online master of biomedical sciences degree, and she trained to become a community health worker, in part, to enhance her professional background before applying to medical school. The experience, says Makhoul, has allowed her to see “a different side of patients.”

As AmeriCorps members, the students receive a living stipend of $15 an hour while fulfilling the requirements of the CHW program. Participants also receive an educational award of more than $6,000 and, if needed, are eligible for food assistance, child care assistance, and access to medical, dental, and vision coverage.

The women stay in touch with other students from their respective CHW classroom cohorts who are located throughout the region at their assigned host sites. These medically minded students recently formed a book club. Their first selected reading, perhaps not surprisingly, is “Lifelines: A Doctor’s Journey in the Fight for Public Health.”

For Pujols Recio, serving as a CHW allows her to move in the direction of her ultimate career ambition while gaining some valuable health care experience. A 2022 graduate of Keystone College, she has a dual degree in general biology and pre-medicine/public health. Her long-held goal is to become a physician.

“I came to the U.S.,” she says, “knowing what I wanted to do.”

Her desire to enter the medical profession has only become more focused as a result of those experiences. Medicine is, after all, a career in which the goal is to cure and comfort.

In the pandemic’s early days, she says that she worked at a Hazleton nursing home as a certified nursing assistant who helped residents with bathing and other activities of daily living. The job could be both physically and emotionally challenging, she says.

But Pujols Recio sees her stints as a nursing assistant and as a community health worker – both of which provided one-on-one patient experiences – as important steps on her path to one day becoming a skilled, compassionate doctor.

“I’m going to be treating my patients, not a disease,” she says. “I’m going to be looking at the individual.”

Meanwhile, Pujols Recio continues to revel in the everyday successes of community health workers.

She recently received a call from a patient whom she had been assisting for several months, after first encountering him at an area food kitchen. During the call, the formerly homeless man excitedly told Pujols Recio it seemed as if an application for public housing that she helped him to submit was moving forward and he might soon have a consistent place to stay.

To her, it was a spirit-lifting affirmation of what she and her fellow CHWs are able to do. “The support that we’re providing as community health workers to our patients is working,” she says. “It’s working!”

Are you interested in becoming a community health worker? Learn about upcoming training opportunities offered in Northeast Pennsylvania by the Area Health Education Center and apply at www.pachw.org/education-training.

Longtime area deejay Jason McConnell relied on income from his self-owned businesses during the early stages of recovery from a substance use disorder.

The Wright Center and allies in newly formed Project PROGRESS aim to expand work options for region’s residents seeking to overcome substance use disorders

Earning money came easily for Jason McConnell from the time he was a teen, pulling in hundreds of dollars per night at area hotspots as a popular deejay.

The Olyphant native’s prospects sank fast, however, as a substance use disorder that first surfaced in high school began destroying his business relationships, his credit rating and his life. The lucrative weekend gigs declined, until finally one night the college dropout found himself playing music at one of the few spots that would still agree to hire him:
a strip club.

Humiliated and dejected, he quit, left the club and drove straight to a liquor store. Before his Saturday night ended, McConnell, then in his mid-20s, had been charged with a DUI offense.

“That was really the turning point,” says McConnell, now 30 and sober for nearly six years. “The day after that DUI, I remember sitting in a rocker at my parents’ house, beneath the deck, and I felt so empty inside. That’s when I was like, ‘Let’s do whatever we have to do. I can’t live like this anymore.’”

For people like McConnell who are intent on overcoming a substance use disorder and leading a healthier life, the challenge often goes beyond dealing with the physical and psychological addiction. They also face financial hurdles, often because social stigma and other barriers prevent them from vying for desirable jobs or even entering quality educational and training programs. Their road to recovery becomes blocked, potentially resulting in poor outcomes, even relapse.

The Wright Center for Community Health – a Scranton-based provider of primary care, medication-assisted treatment and recovery-related services in Northeast Pennsylvania – recognizes how difficult it can be to get and stay sober, especially if a person struggles to find and maintain well-paying employment. That’s why The Wright Center is leading a regional initiative called Project PROGRESS.

The project, which was launched in mid-2022, aims to expand opportunities for people living in recovery to find meaningful and family-sustaining employment, including careers in the health care field. Fueled by grant funding from the Appalachian Regional Commission, the project’s promoters will engage with business owners and leaders across multiple industries to reduce the unfair stigma associated with substance use disorders and remove obstacles that prohibit workplace participation. Along the way, promoters believe this long-term effort to address the damage done by the nation’s opioid crisis can foster greater compassion toward people coping with substance use disorders and improve our region’s still-healing communities.

The initiative has already provided free training to dozens of individuals seeking to enter health care careers as certified recovery specialists and community health workers. Next, the founders of Project PROGRESS intend to promote greater awareness about a network of recovery-friendly employers in the region who can extend job opportunities in health care, manufacturing, retail and other industries.

Finding an empathetic employer

In McConnell’s case, his ability to earn money immediately after treatment – and while living in the vulnerable stage of early recovery – was hobbled by the lack of a college degree. But he had an entrepreneurial drive. He managed to slowly revive his deejay operation while also launching a cellphone repair service. Then, during a health checkup at The Wright Center, another job prospect emerged.

Dr. Linda Thomas-Hemak, The Wright Center’s president and CEO, who also had been McConnell’s longtime physician, knew about the impressive strides he had made toward changing his life for the better. “She said that I would be great for a position as a certified recovery specialist,” he recalls.

McConnell suspended business at his cellphone shop for two weeks so that he could complete the required training, then began work as a certified recovery specialist – a person who has gone through the recovery process and can serve as a mentor, role model and motivator for those beginning the journey.

“When I meet a new patient, I try to explain to them that I’ve been where they’re at,” he says. “The job involves a lot of talking about your personal experience and giving suggestions.”

Through the Project PROGRESS program, training to become a certified recovery specialist has been provided by Luzerne County Community College to dozens of individuals. More trainees are expected to soon enter the pipeline. Similarly, the Northeast Pennsylvania Area Health Education Center offers preparation to become a community
health worker.

McConnell can attest that patients who lack a post-high school education might not find it easy to land a decent job, because they are all too commonly viewed by certain employers as having three strikes against them. “Without an education, getting a job after being in active addiction and possibly having a criminal record from past behavior – forget about it,” he says. “It’s nearly impossible.”

Even for job-seekers with impressive resumes, employers might not provide the flexible schedules necessary to treat their disorders, especially if that involves weekly doctor’s appointments for medication-assisted treatment. “How can someone work a typical 9-to-5 shift,” asks McConnell, “when they have to go to doctor’s appointments, get involved in a recovery program and constantly work on themselves?”

‘Second chance at being happy’

In his role as a certified recovery specialist, McConnell prioritizes his patients’ schedules and stays accessible by phone call and text. Although based at The Wright Center’s Mid Valley Practice in Jermyn, he moves throughout the area, meeting patients where they are at, even if that means a corner coffee shop. His workdays can be mentally and emotionally draining due to the intensity of some conversations, he says. But he remains eager to talk with patients and other audiences, particularly school groups, sharing the powerful story of his personal journey and hoping to help people avoid or recover from similar mistakes.

McConnell, a 2009 graduate of Mid Valley High School in Throop, traces his troubles back to energy drinks. At 15 or 16, he began consuming the highly caffeinated beverages for the rush.

“From there, I experimented,” he says. He moved from marijuana and alcohol to prescription pills, then to eventually buying opioids off the street from strangers.

“I think I was just chasing a feeling,” he says.

Under addiction’s grip, he fell off of the college track. He took a string of sales jobs, hastily leaving each when his performance lagged or he couldn’t get drugs delivered to the site. His downward spiral culminated with legal troubles, shattered relationships and multiple car mishaps, including serious crashes and a string of minor ones. “Right before I got sober, I was the king of popping tires,” he says. “I crushed so many curbs.”

Finally, McConnell was facing a DUI charge and contemplating the far-reaching consequences of his mistakes. “That solidified it for me,” he says. “I don’t think I was any more willing to enter rehabilitation than at that moment.”

Thanks to the Pocono Mountain Recovery Center, the Geisinger Marworth outpatient treatment program, his family, other supporters and his own determination, McConnell got the appropriate care for his disorder.

He was able to put his life on a whole new trajectory. He gradually restored his credit rating. He even turned his once-tarnished deejay business into a thriving moonlighting enterprise.

“When I got sober, I realized it was a second chance at being happy, being everything that I ever wanted to be,” he says. “And with a clear mind, you can go a long way.”

Project PROGRESS aims to connect individuals and recovery-friendly employers in Lackawanna, Luzerne, Pike, Susquehanna, Wayne and Wyoming counties. For more information, visit ProjectPROGRESSnepa.org.

DEI strategist Arthur Chan once said, “Diversity initiatives, though well intentioned, are not merely enough if organizations are not focused on the outcome – belonging.” Therefore, “Diversity is a fact. Equity is a choice. Inclusion is an action. Belonging is an outcome,” he said.

Please turn to our news page or monitor The Wright Center’s social media platforms for Dr. Samonte’s monthly DEI video.

Appointments for preschoolers to receive the vaccine can be made at any of these Wright Center primary care clinics:

• Kingston Practice, 2 Sharpe St., Kingston: 570.491.0126
• Mid Valley Practice, 5 S. Washington Ave., Jermyn: 570.230.0019
• Scranton Practice, 501 S. Washington Ave., Scranton: 570.941.0630

Pfizer’s vaccine has been approved for youngsters ages 6 months through 4 years. Its shots for this age group are only one-tenth its adult dosage and will be given in a three-shot series.

Moderna’s vaccine is intended for youngsters ages 6 months through 5 years. Its shots for this age group contain one-quarter the dose of the company’s adult vaccine. It will be administered in a two-dose series, and the company expects to later offer a booster.

Pharmacists in Pennsylvania are allowed to provide COVID-19 vaccines only to children ages 3 and up, according to the state Department of Health. Parents and guardians seeking appointments for children under 3 years old should contact a pediatrician, family doctor or other qualified physician.

For more information about The Wright Center’s services, including its COVID-19 vaccination, testing and treatment services, call 570.230.0019 or visit TheWrightCenter.org.

“Approval of the pediatric vaccine by the CDC is an important development as we work together to end the global pandemic through vaccinations, masking and social distancing,” said Dr. Jignesh Y. Sheth, chief medical officer and senior vice president at The Wright Center for Community Health. “The vaccine will offer a high level of protection for children ages 5-11 and slow the spread of the virus among others in our community, especially during the upcoming holiday season. It is also another step closer to normalcy for society and helping our school-aged children to remain in school for in-person learning.”

Due to the CDC’s recommendation, which was also fully endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatricians, about 28 million children in the new age group will be eligible to receive a vaccination. The CDC recommended vaccinations for children, ages 12-15, in May. 

“We will continue to encourage all Pennsylvanians to get their COVID-19 vaccine, and we are very excited that we can now include children ages 5 and over in that effort,” Pennsylvania Acting Secretary of Health Alison Beam said in a state Department of Health press release. “To fellow parents I say: If you have a child between 5 and 11, get them vaccinated and give your child the power to safely learn, play and be a kid.”

Appointments to receive the pediatric vaccine may be made at the following Wright Center for Community Health clinics: Scranton Practice, 501 S. Washington Ave.; Mid Valley Practice, 5 S. Washington Ave., Jermyn; South Franklin Street Practice, 335 S. Franklin St., Wilkes-Barre, and West Scranton Intermediate School-Based Health, 1401 Fellows St., Scranton. To make an appointment, visit TheWrightCenter.org or call 570-230-0019. 

The Wright Center for Community Health has been administering third doses and booster shots of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines to eligible age groups as per CDC guidelines. People should talk to their health care provider about their medical condition and whether or not getting an additional dose or booster is appropriate for them.

“Keystone Mission works hand in glove with regional community social service agencies to provide support to people in our homeless communities in Northeast Pennsylvania,” said Justin V. Behrens, L.S.W., CEO and executive director of Keystone Mission. “I believe I am speaking for everyone at Keystone Mission when I say we are extremely grateful for the medical attention The Wright Center is providing to the people we serve. Together, we are working to provide them with healthy minds, bodies and spirits.”

The Wright Center for Community Health will administer the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, which was approved in August by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for individuals 12 and older. Although the health care screening and vaccinations are primarily for residents of Keystone Mission, walk-up appointments also are welcome throughout the day.

To make an appointment call 570-343-2382 or go online at TheWrightCenter.org. The Wright Center will never deny health care services based on a patient’s inability to pay. 

“The Wright Center for Community Health works collaboratively with community agencies to make outreach to underserved communities in Northeast Pennsylvania,” said Robin Rosencrans, practice manager for Driving Better Health. “Our mobile clinic makes vaccinations and well-check services accessible for people who otherwise might not have necessary transportation for appointments with primary care providers.”

Driving Better Health features two fully equipped examination operatories. It is a way to bring health care to the region’s most vulnerable, underserved populations. It is staffed by a multidisciplinary, bilingual primary care team of clinicians who will deliver primary health care to those most in need.