People – Passion – Professionalism: Staff experiences during the pandemic

Ana Marquez, Challenge Diabetes Program Coordinator

What do you like best about your job? 

I love that I have the opportunity to work on chronic disease prevention programming. Promoting health and well-being is so important, especially now. I also have enjoyed assisting with rental applications during the pandemic because I know the work is so important to the community.

What was it like working at CSA this past year during the pandemic? How did your job change? How did you flex, pivot and stretch to meet increasing client and/or agency need? 

My job changed significantly and became completely virtual. I quickly learned that enrollment and engagement of the Challenge Diabetes Program would be different and challenging. In a short turnaround, I had to modify the diabetes prevention programming to virtual only. Despite the challenges, CSA was able to collaborate with partner agencies and enroll people in the program.

Was there a seminal moment/incident during this past year when you realized just how much the pandemic is/was impacting your clients and/or workload?  

I realized how much the pandemic was impacting clients each time I talked to them about their rental assistance applications and saw how serious their financial situations were.