Leonela
The pounding sounds of Air Care One’s rotors echo across the arid lands of Shiprock, New Mexico, as the helicopter lingers ominously in the sky. It has flown up from Albuquerque, preparing to transport a patient 200 miles from the Northern Navajo Medical Center to a trauma hospital in the state’s largest city. Few people look towards the sky – knowing its implications. But, in the Indian Health Services’ Shiprock Service Unit, the largest service unit of the Navajo Nation, the work to triage, treat and contain COVID-19, has been a community-wide effort for well over a year.
Healthcare professionals – doctors, nurses, public health workers, community health workers, educators, researchers – from over five facilities located on the medical campus have responded to the ongoing medical needs COVID has created across the Four Corners area of the Navajo Nation. Among the medical partners, Johns Hopkins Center for American Indian Health, has provided a rapid public health response to COVID on the Navajo Nation – including sourcing Personal Protective Equipment for health care providers and responders, and sharing public health communications.
Leonela is Red Cheek clan, born for Near the Water clan. Her maternal grandparents are from the Yucca Fruit clan. Her paternal grandparents are from the Towering House clan. Prior to COVID, Leonela’s work focused on prevention of early childhood obesity and prevention/management of youth onset diabetes.
Leonela is originally from Teec Nos Pos, Arizona, where she currently resides. This is her story, in her own words.
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It was by chance and a lot of luck that I got into this work. I graduated from Northern Arizona University and I had a hard time finding a job. So, I just stayed home for a year – year and a half. I ended up working up here at Indian Health Services (IHS) and for the tribe for a bit.
My first project that I ever worked on for the Center (Johns Hopkins American Indian Health Center) was a program called, “Together on Diabetes,” which helped at-risk youth, or youth that had diabetes. We did home visits and just went through a 12-lesson curriculum, and tried to help curb the obesity rate. That aspect of home visiting and being out in the community was so new and I didn’t even realize people did that. It was people from my own community, in this area, and when I did home visiting, I was able to meet and see everyone else – all the different disparities, the different problems and family dynamics.
I guess considering that I’m Native American and I live on a Reservation, I have it pretty good. My parents are still married; we always had water and electricity, and my parents both had good jobs. All of my siblings went to college and my dad went to college. That’s just not the norm, so when I got that job and was out in the community, learning about all the other people, it was really eye-opening and I was almost ashamed a little bit, that I didn’t know that was happening.
I’m a family health coach now, so I do home visits and meet with moms – really spending time with them for the first two years of a baby’s life. Giving them all the necessary education: “Your baby is six-months, you should be doing solids now. Make sure you give water, and don’t give Kool-Aid. Your baby is nine months and they’re going to start walking soon. Where is a safe place for them to play?” That was my job and it was great – it was fun.
But, when COVID happened, all of that halted. We were sent home on March 16 from the Center, and I had to talk to all of my participants. We had to call all of the moms and try to connect with them over the phone – that was hard, especially for people who don’t have access to good cell service or who don’t have their own phone. Or who have a phone, but the data is limited. Or who don’t have someplace to charge their phone so they only use it for essentials. It was draining because, instead of talking about their child’s milestones, they started to talk about themselves, as moms – what they were going through. You know, their mom or grandmother or someone in their family had COVID, or somebody passed and they didn’t know what to do. It turned into an outlet for the moms to still connect with someone and talk about their feelings – but we were still trying to also support them with their children.
The Center was starting to have conversations about what might happen; people who worked in infectious disease were trying to keep us up-to-date, because we didn’t know anything. No one knew anything. We got word pretty quickly – April, I think – that the Center had secured some funds from our partners and we were getting supplies.
PPE was the first thing we got. We facilitated getting those supplies to IHS, and then came the items for wellness boxes – bleach, masks, gloves. We were supposed to get thermometers, but they never came. We were able to partner with Shamrock, and we got big tubs of rice and beans. Here at the office, we were putting those boxes together. We had protocol about safety and sanitizing – making sure everyone was in a mask, and we washed our hands several times before we touched the rice. We learned how to seal it properly – all kinds of stuff. We split the rice and beans up and put them into the wellness boxes for people.
Right away, we also got water delivery with the help of Dig Deep, which we were able to distribute. We got three trucks with 22 pallets each. We delivered those to chapters in the area, which was hard because we wanted to partner with chapters, but everyone was closed. There were only certain chapters that were open – where they had people comfortable enough working. In May, we got a delivery from Baby to Baby with six pallets of diapers, so we did drive-thru events for the community, offering diapers and formula.
I was really scared to come to the office at the beginning. I just had really high anxiety – like shaking sometimes, even. I didn’t want to go anywhere and it was so scary for my parents who are elderly. I came to work, though, I think because COVID just kept coming, and we were able to reach out and get help from our partners, when it felt like no other help was coming. The tribe wasn’t able to take care of all these small things, and so I think coming in to do what I could – to organize and give out PPE, it was just a way to help and contribute.
It’s been a year now and things are better than a year ago; I think that we’ve gone through the worst part and now it’s just trying to re-organize and get back. But there’s hope. People have hope; people are healing and people need to take the time to do that. Now is a good time to be talking about this – it’s Spring. In Navajo culture, Spring is a time when things are planted and animals are born and it’s a new beginning. It’s starting to get bright and warm. I think that’s where we are.
COVID has been considered a monster. From different stories that we’ve heard before, there are always going to be monsters and we just go through it; we go through it together as a community. We lost people. But, as a community, we can be really proud of uplifting ourselves and listening. People wanted to help – people got vaccinated and stayed at home. People wear their masks. People here listen because we want to take care of each other. It’s about resilience and we’re continuing to do that. We’re back on lockdowns from a small spike; the big concern is the variants, so we were asked to go back to shelter-in-place.
People move really fast in life – you just get into a routine day-to-day, you get your things done and you wake up, and do the same thing over and over again. What I’ve taken from this time is to really slow down and decide: are these situations the best for me? Whether it’s my job or my health or my relationships. Is this what I enjoy? COVID took a lot of people and changed people’s lives forever – so, what can I do to maximize my time here on Earth? Everyone keeps talking about going back to normal, but it’s not normal. It’s not going to be normal. People have been able to pivot and re-evaluate, and at least have some self-reflection.
Because of COVID, there was a big spotlight on Navajo Nation, which in a way, was a good thing. There was a lot of funding that helped with different needs – mainly water. A lot of people got water and electricity in one year, who have been waiting for years and years and years, and probably wouldn’t ever have gotten it. But, the funding allowed for that. So, the spotlight on those disparities was important.
It also reminded people that we’re still here. As the first people of America, we’re still here.
Public mural in Shiprock, New Mexico.
