What this Mennonite healthcare provider learned working during the measles outbreak

The measles outbreak in southwestern Ontario has put the spotlight on vaccine hesitancy in some of the province's Mennonite communities in recent months.

Public health units were dealing with hundreds of sick people, primarily children, this past spring, with the number of cases only recently dropping off in July. Southwestern Public Health, which covers an area with a large Mennonite community, translated material in Low German to try to educate people about the risk.

Catalina Friesen is a personal support worker who was raised Mennonite in Mexico and moved to Canada with her family as a child. She's now a personal support worker with a mobile clinic that works with Mennonite families in the Aylmer area.

She recently wrote an editorial for MacLean's magazine about her experience during the measles outbreak. Here's her conversation with London Morning guest host Travis Dolynny.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Travis Dolynny: What did you see in your job when the measles outbreak started in the communities where you work?

Catalina Friesen: There was a lot of fear within our clientele. They came to us with a lot of questions to see what they should do. So we tried our best to explain the benefits of the vaccines.

TD: Did you have any idea how fast and how many people would be affected when the measles spread?

CF: I had an idea that it would probably go quickly because of the hesitancy for the vaccines, but honestly, I didn't realize how many would get it so fast.

TD: What were you thinking at the time?

CF: I thought 'yikes,' let's see how we can help them. That's basically what we were trying to do.

LISTEN | Catalina Friesen shares her experience helping Mennonite communites during the measles outbreak:

TD: How did you end up working in healthcare as a personal support worker?

CF: I started because my grandmother was put in a nursing home and couldn't understand the language. My compassion just grew to try to help them out with translating. So when I started here at the Central Community Health Centre in St. Thomas, I was introduced to this program with the mobile unit, bringing it out to Aylmer. It just grew so fast.

TD: How successful do you think you've been at earning the community's trust?

CF: I will tell you it started with about 100 Mennonite community clients. We're now close to 700, and they're coming to us with a lot of questions. I would say we've been able to get about three-quarters of them to understand the importance of vaccines and actually get them vaccinated.

TD: Can you give us a sense of how many people you knew who were infected?

CF: I would say about 200 to 300 people that I talked to myself who came to the clinic. And just because of not wanting to vaccinate.

Once I was able to help a lot of them understand that God has created doctors for the purpose of helping them, they would listen a little bit more.- Catalina Friesen, PSW​​​

TD: What were some of the barriers or challenges that you faced when working with people?

CF: The biggest thing, obviously, is the language barrier. It's really hard for them to come to us, to come to any health professional, because of misunderstanding the diagnosis or misunderstanding what the big words are. When they learned that I was able to speak Low German, I was able to help them understand everything. We gained quite a few people that way.

TD: Can you give us a sense of why there's vaccine hesitancy in some Mennonite communities?

CF: The biggest thing is that they don't want to not trust God. So their faith has a lot to do with it. Once I was able to help a lot of them understand that God has created doctors for the purpose of helping them, they would listen a little bit more.

TD: What lessons do you think you've learned working with Mennonite communities during this measles outbreak?

CF: The biggest thing for us, my coworker and I, is to just get them to trust us. If they don't want to vaccinate, we respect that. Because they see that we respect their values, they start to really trust and understand that we're here to help them, not to hurt them.

TD: And have you been successful in getting some people to vaccinate their children?

CF: Yes, we have. The biggest thing I'm doing now is I'm just trying to get them to come and do their vaccines early before fall comes around.