Cathy Venter’s mobility challenges make leaving the house challenging.
“I can’t get to town, I can’t take a bus anymore,” Venter, 74, explained. “I’m really, really limited.”
Even so, she made it out to the East Whatcom Regional Resource Center on Tuesday evening for a community health meeting, with help from a neighbor who provided transportation.
She came because “it’s my community,” she said. “And to support everyone else who is really working hard for the community.”
Venter was one of dozens who packed a space in the resource center to hear about the rural Whatcom County Health Equity Zone, part of the state’s initiative to address health disparities by supporting locally led projects. The Chuckanut Health Foundation runs outreach and project development in the Whatcom zone, which spans the Mount Baker School District, with the help of $400,000 in state funds over two years.
That money, however, is reserved for community engagement, explained former Bellingham City Council member Kristina Michele Martens, who is now the health foundation’s special projects manager. The foundation provided food, interpreters and $25 gift cards to attendees at Tuesday’s event.
From here, the foundation will take applications for a community advisory board staffed by local people, a search that will go to the end of February. The board will vote on projects to bring to the state Department of Health, which helps find funding for them, based on what members believe is most urgently needed.
The foundation will pay board members $75 per hour for a monthly two-hour meeting, as well as organizing transportation, child care and interpretation, as needed, Martens told the crowd at the resource center.
“This is a truly unique opportunity where the government is essentially writing a check for the community to do whatever they want,” Martens said in an interview. “It’s a little ethereal because it seems so opposite of how government works, especially American government.”
Heather Baroody, 37, brought her 7-month-old baby to the meeting.
“We just wanted to come out and voice that there’s a need for child care,” she said.
Baroody, who moved to the area a year ago after a decade in Canada, has encountered no child care nearby. What options there are seem to require parents to make under a certain amount of income to qualify.
“There’s a bigger need,” she said, noting she would consider applying for the advisory board.
Others mentioned food access, garbage dumping and addiction among issues they cared about.
As for Venter, she was interested in finding a way for herself and her husband to get vaccines nearby instead of having to travel, given her disability.
A previous version of this story misstated what Chuckanut Health Foundation will pay board members. The foundation will pay board members $75 per hour. This story was updated to reflect the change at 10:13 a.m. Dec. 6, 2024. Cascadia Daily News regrets the error.
Sophia Gates covers rural Whatcom and Skagit counties. She is a Washington State Murrow Fellow whose work is underwritten by taxpayers and available outside CDN's paywall. Reach her at sophiagates@cascadiadaily.com; 360-922-3090 ext. 131.
