Earlier this year, Jesslyn Froese and Moises Vasquez found it tough no longer visiting migrant workers for health checkups at Niagara’s farms, like they have been doing since 2015.
Froese is a registered nurse working for Quest Community Health Centre as an outreach nurse, and Vasquez is a Quest community health worker. Together, they visit migrant workers to provide primary medical care.
“Seasonal workers face a lot of barriers here,” Vasquez said of the 3,000 men and women that come to Canada to work at Niagara’s farms each year.
Bringing the clinic to the farm, instead of workers having to come to Quest’s clinic (though it is required at times) eliminates common barriers to accessing healthcare, like transportation, limited time, and language.
“We work hard to build trust between them and us,” said Vasquez, whose mother tongue is Spanish.
But when COVID-19 struck, the in-person visits were suspended.
Other clinics, like those run out of Cornerstone and Southridge churches, are shut down for the year.
“That building of rapport and relationship is huge. We love going out to the farm and being able to see them in person, and it was really hard not to have that,” Froese said.
Since late summer, Quest has resumed in-person visits, both at farms and their Sunday clinics which are run biweekly out of Quest between April and October.
Between Froese and Vasquez, 500 workers are cared for. Each worker is seen an average of three times, making up around 1,500 contacts in a season.
This year they’re seeing fewer workers, but COVID has presented unique challenges.
During the months-long pause on in-person visits, consults were — and some still are — being conducted virtually.
Vasquez said some workers have needed Quest’s counselling services to cope with mental health stresses from long periods of social isolation.
“There’s a lot that can’t be assessed over phone,” Froese added.
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Quest’s general community clinic has already seen their last patient by four o’clock, but Froese and Vasquez are just starting their night, loading gear into a white van.
Froese steers the van through wine country to a farm roughly 14 minutes away from Quest’s St. Catharines’ location.
Birds are chirping among the rows of grapevines, the sound from a TV leaks outside, and a man talks on the phone in a thick Jamaican accent—loud enough to be heard over the conversation taking place between Froese and Clive Brown.
Clive Brown has his blood pressure checked by Jesslyn Froese while Moises Vasquez sets up a laptop at a vineyard in Niagara on Sept. 15, 2020.
“Did you take your medication today?” she asks.
“I drink about two hours of beer today.”
“Oh, but you still need to take your medication,” she says.
The flimsy shield covering Froese’s face runs with beads of condensation and fogs over as she gives Brown advice and asks if there are other reasons why he’s not taking his medication.
Brown is a middle-aged man from St. Catharine parish in Jamaica.
He sends the money earned harvesting Niagara’s wine grapes back home to his wife, Clarence. He’s been making the trip between the Caribbean and Canada to work fields here for 38 years. He lingers on each word: “Thirty. Eight. Years.”
Froese checks his blood pressure six times, getting an average for a more accurate reading.
Clive Brown, a migrant farm worker from Jamaica, tries to peak at numbers on a blood pressure machine while having his pressure checked outside of his bunkhouse at a Niagara vineyard, on September 15, 2020.
Vasquez crouches over a laptop nearby, connected to internet via a mobile Wifi router.
He clacks away at the laptop’s keyboard, entering information about Brown’s checkup into his electronic medical record.
Brown will leave Canada next month, and he asks after a prescription to take back home. Froese will make it happen.
She later says this is the second time Brown has had to be scolded about not taking medication for high blood pressure—one of the more common conditions among migrant workers, in addition to diabetes and musculoskeletal issues.
Moises Vasquez, a community health worker with Quest Community Health Centre, is seen talking on a phone at a Niagara farm on September 15, 2020.
At the second location visited, a fruit farm, the air quickly chills as the sun dips. Passing cars on a nearby road interrupt the silence while another Jamaican man, this one younger, waits for the blood pressure cuff wrapped around his arm to inflate.
The younger Jamaican man didn’t want his name shared but said he’s been coming here to work since 2011 and supports five children back home.
Froese listens to the man’s lungs before leaving, and Vasquez leaves handfuls of condoms and tubes of hand sanitizer for the other workers.
By 8:30, the pair have seen four workers. The night winds down earlier than usual and Froese aims the van back to Quest.
A nurse practitioner at Quest will review care notes from the night and decide on the next course of action.
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Quest is the only clinic providing a suite of health care services to migrant workers in Niagara during the pandemic. And those services wouldn’t be available if not for the generosity of volunteer physicians, nurses, allied health workers, physiotherapists, dieticians and counsellors.
Funding for Quest’s seasonal worker program is specific and constricted. Anything worked beyond a certain hour becomes time volunteered.
Froese wishes more funding was available to eliminate shortages of time and people power.
“In the last couple years, we’ve actually had to turn people away because we just don’t have the capacity to see everybody on a Sunday,” Froese said of the biweekly clinics at Quest.
She and Vasquez are constantly getting messages of gratitude from workers.
She’s just happy to give back to those who give so much to the community through their labour, she said. “I just love this population.”
“They really appreciate what we do,” Vasquez said.
Lights from passing cars behind are blurred during a long exposure as Moises Vasquez (L) enters information on a laptop, and Jesslyn Froese (C) looks on as a migrant farm worker, and client of Quest Community Health Centre has his blood pressure checked as part of a health checkup up a Niagara farm on September 15, 2020.
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