Prisila Velazquez has spent about a decade helping people navigate a healthcare system that can be difficult to move through alone. As a Greater Seattle area-based Community Health Worker (CHW) Lead at Waymark, she coaches a team of CHWs while continuing to serve patients directly, guiding both toward better, more connected care.

Prisila sees health care as work that should be fully integrated, with pharmacists, care coordinators, therapists, and CHWs sharing ideas and resources in service to each patient and their goals. Below, she discusses what her role entails, how Waymark's care team works together, a recent patient story centered on the difference stable housing can make, and what brought her to this work.

In your words, what does your role at Waymark entail, and how do you support and enable patients?

I have the opportunity to support my team of community health workers and to guide them in how to best support patients. More than anything, the work is about navigating a system together that can be tricky for everyone. With my team, we share ideas, we share resources, we share everything. Sometimes I'll suggest a different approach, or something we haven't tried before, so we can keep our patients engaged.

I feel fortunate, because I get to work with really amazing people. A lot of them have far more knowledge than I do, so I get to guide them in some areas and learn from them in others. With patients, it's the same kind of exchange: "Have you tried this? Can we do this? Actually, there's a resource you might try." Helping the team and our patients is the most rewarding part of my job.

How do you work alongside other roles on our care team?

The other day, I had a patient who was changing medication, and medication isn't my strongest area. So I reached out to one of our clinical pharmacists, Silu, and she helped me with a script for how to explain it to the patient: this one isn't right for you, here's what you might switch to. I felt so confident going back to the patient, because I actually understood it. That integration across every role and every part of the team matters, because in the end we all share the same goal, which is to provide something beneficial for the patient. When one patient is working with everyone, that coordination is how we reach the bigger goal.

I have a great team behind me, the pharmacists, the clinical team, everyone, and each person plays a part in what we're able to do for our patients. I have nothing but thanks and gratitude for the entire team and everything we’re able to do together.

Can you share an example of how you recently helped to support a patient in your community?

The most recent one is a patient who reached out needing to change his primary care provider after moving counties, and who also needed to find different housing. I went to one of my CHWs, who is amazing with resources, and asked her to remind me of her housing contact. She shared it, I connected with them, and we worked through everything.

That patient was able to access housing incredibly quickly, and that was partly because of our care team and partly because he was so motivated and engaged. He has transportation services now, and his primary care is sorted out. That came from different people working together toward the same goal.

When a patient can trust you, because you've proven that you're there for them, that combination of communication and showing up is how you engage them, and it’s how you prove you are present in the community and actually there to support them.

What brought you to Waymark?

I've been doing this kind of work for about 10 years, and I've always had a passion for helping people navigate the health system. My goal in life is to make a difference for someone. It doesn't matter whether it's something small or something big, as long as it's something good for that person.

I came to Waymark because it built on the work I'd already been doing, supporting the Medicaid population through teams that work together. That passion, and the way Waymark's values aligned with my own, is why I'm here.