‘We are hope’: A Philadelphia health center plans expansion to help treat opioid addiction | The Pennsylvania Independent
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Sen. Bob Casey visits with Esperanza Health Center employees on Aug. 19, 2024, in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia, Aug. 19, 2024. (Photo by Anna Gustafson)

PHILADELPHIA — When Xashyl Morales walked through the doors of the Esperanza Health Center in Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood seven years ago, she was seeking treatment for an opioid addiction. 

Now Morales is a community engagement specialist at the nonprofit she credits for changing her life. 

“After years of battling addiction, I remembered I asked God for an opportunity to give back, an opportunity to be able to help other people,” said Morales, who began working at Esperanza about one and a half years ago. “I have been through addiction, and I know what it feels like. And today, I’m able to give other people hope.”

More hope is on the horizon for Esperanza, a faith-based nonprofit that operates health centers for low-income residents in Philadelphia’s Kensington, Fairhill and Hunting Park neighborhoods and a community center in Kensington. On Aug. 19, U.S. Sen. Bob Casey visited the organization to announce he had secured $464,000 in federal funding for the nonprofit. The funding comes from congressionally directed spending, often referred to as earmarks, in the federal budget.

That money will help Esperanza, which means “hope” in Spanish, expand its Fairhill location on North 5th Street. Likely beginning in the spring or summer of 2025, the renovated facility will be able to serve 2,800 to 3,000 patients. Currently, it can receive about 2,000 patients. The expanded offerings will include primary care services, treatment services for opioid use disorder, and behavioral health programs.

“I can’t even begin to commend the work of Esperanza in a manner that’s commensurate with the work that you do every day,” Casey told a group of the nonprofit’s employees. “So thanks for continuing your mission of helping the most vulnerable among us, and thank you again for doing God’s work each and every day.”

Susan Post, Esperanza’s CEO and a Hunting Park resident, said the additional funding is needed in the wake of an increased demand for their services, from primary care to addiction treatment. As overdose deaths rise in Philadelphia, Post said, she and others at the nonprofit want to provide a safe, affordable and accessible haven for those struggling with addiction.

They also want to offer general physical and mental health services for residents living in some of the poorest areas of the city, where patients are often unable to access basic needs like housing and food.

“Fairhill is actually the location with the second-lowest family income in the city of Philadelphia,” Post said of the neighborhood where the expanded site will be. “They also have a lot more opioid use disorder that’s happening there than in previous years, and it’s also the highest for linguistic isolation for people that speak Spanish. We are bilingual here, and so it’s going to allow a lot of people just to walk to that clinic because it’s very, very local.”

It’s not just that patients can walk to the neighborhood health centers that makes them accessible, employees explained. Post and other leaders at the nonprofit work hard to gain the trust of their patients. Many of those who work there live in the neighborhoods they serve, which allows them to build relationships with people who may feel wary of health care because of negative experiences in the past or because of the stigma surrounding seeking help. The nonprofit’s workers also speak Spanish, which is especially important because the health centers operate in the city’s largest Hispanic and Latino communities, the Fairhill and Hunting Park neighborhoods.

“In the Latino community, addiction is so stigmatized and frowned upon to the point that the Latino community doesn’t want to seek help,” Morales said. “So, just by speaking their language, it makes them comfortable enough; they can identify a different way and they can open up.”

Juan Pérez, the chief operating officer at Esperanza, said a number of its employees have overcome their own battles with addiction. Several of the security guards, for example, have dealt with addiction and now reach out to the people they see struggling on the streets near the health center sites. Those individuals then feel comfortable reaching out for help because the guards have spent time with them, Pérez explained. 

“So I think what I want to see is more of that,” Pérez said. “How do we continue to build relationships? How do we continue to take the lived experience of people, especially who have overcome and have shown it, and then be able to proliferate that?” 

Part of the answer is rooted in the nonprofit simply having enough space, Pérez said. First comes the space, then comes the healing, Morales explained. 

Morales knows this because she lived it. Already, she knows what the new space will be like without having to see it: a place where her neighbors can start to feel the same sense of optimism about their lives that she feels about hers.

“I’m able to give love, kindness and respect, which are simple things that these individuals don’t receive often, and that is very fulfilling to be able to do everyday, very fulfilling to be able to save lives,” Morales said. “We are hope in Kensington. We are hope in the Fairhill section of Philadelphia, and we are hope in the Hunting Park section of Philadelphia.”

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