Manténgase Saludable

So I was pulled into a meeting two weeks ago with our Executive Director and the Kaiser summer intern to discuss a Grant that we were awarded. We were awarded a grant based on our proposal to provide nutrition education and healthy cooking classes to the latino population that our clinic serves as a way to be involved in diabetes/hypertension/obesity education and prevention. Sounds pretty exciting, right? I thought so... until I realized that the summer intern was about to take off back to school and the reason I was involved in the meeting was because this is now MY project. So here I am, two weeks later, losing my the summer intern/grant author tomorrow, about to be left out on my own on this project, and completely overwhelmed. 

Up until yesterday things had gone fairly smoothly. I was calling locations: churches and schools with kitchen and childcare facilities, narrowed it down to a few to visit. Went to a local middle school and decided that their facility was probably the best. I even presented to the Latino Patient Advisory Counsel – a meeting of our Latino patients to get their input on the services we’re offering, a meeting all in Spanish mind you – to get their opinion on what days and times would be best for classes. Things seemed to be going well.

Then Yesterday morning I had a meeting with the woman who runs a very similar… well pretty much the same… program through the OSU extensions office. The intern and I were supposed to go together, but she was shadowing in the ER, so I was on my own. My intention was to get some information about their program and some helpful tips and resources about running our own. Little did I know that I was walking into the lions Den. The woman was not happy that we were “trying to reinvent the wheel” of a well-known and well-oiled program. She was frustrated that we didn’t use them in the grant writing process and after a lot of discussion and trying to convey that I wasn’t involved in the grant writing process and didn’t know if our ED was aware that we could partner with them, she reluctantly decided to let us use their curriculum, and perhaps even teach the classes herself. Though our meeting ended with a hug, it was an awkward and tense experience, and now there is even more pressure on me to make sure our program is well advertised and well attended so that Lynn’s time is used well and we don’t create any more conflict. Yikes – not what I was expecting