"One of the greatest things about the program was the prescription card. My oldest child has chronic head pain disorders. She was hospitalized on the plan, and lined up with a wonderful neurologist who continued to see her for nothing after my two years were up. His office calls are $200."

- Sherri Gibson, CHP member

The Dinner
"In addition to partnering with the docs, we also had to have neighborhood connections," said Barbara Wheeler. "One of the benefits of what we were doing was that we'd be building partnerships in the community.

"We were also concerned that we'd be so overwhelmed by demand that we couldn't coordinate, and that's why we limited the program initially to two census tracts on the south east side. That connection was a natural because we were already involved there. The neighborhood association in the southeast neighborhood, SEQL, was relatively new but we'd worked with them already, and wanted to include them in this project.

"Then, early in 1994, we realized that we were pretty much ready to go, and no one had talked to the neighborhood people yet. We invited some representatives from the neighborhood to a dinner at the Wharf. We asked Mike Mather, Greg Mitchem, Conrad Damian and others to come."

The Wharf is a restaurant on the north bank of the St. Joe River, across from South Bend's downtown and just north of the southeast neighborhood. The restaurant features seafood, it's atmosphere is dark, its furnishings nautical.

"It was one of those situations where you know people but you really don't know them," Wheeler continued. "I mean, there were no relationships yet, so there was a lot of 'I don't have any reason to trust you,' on the neighborhood side of the table. Especially since we were contacting them fairly late in the start-up process. There was sort of a 'Oh, so now you're going to check with us,' attitude. Like, 'You say you want us to be partners, but it sounds like you already have this planned out,' which unfortunately was true in a way.

"What made it worse was that the neighborhood had a lot of experience with institutions coming in and doing things to them rather than with them."

First Impressions
"They didn't really know how to approach us," recalled Mike Mather, pastor of the Broadway Christian Parish in the southeast neighborhood. "I don't think they even knew what role they wanted us to play. They just wanted us onboard somehow. But it was like they'd gotten the plane up to 10,000 feet and then said, 'Jump on.' It doesn't work that way."

Conrad Damian, a high school teacher and resident of the southeast neighborhood, commented:

"I moved to the neighborhood in 1969. I've stayed because I got to know people there, and I can afford the house that I live in. I like it there, and I want to help, but I'm skeptical by nature. And I'm twice as skeptical when someone wants to buy me dinner. I went to the Wharf thinking, 'What do they want?'

"Janine Chambers presented slides on the Minneapolis program and she talked about what they were proposing for South Bend. It was a noble goal. I liked that they were focusing not just on health but also on home. But I was worried about entanglements. Would we end up partnered in something for life? They talked about how they were going to do things, and it sounded like they wanted us to rubber stamp their plans. I was noncommittal. They asked if we'd be interested in working with them. There was a lot that I didn't understand, but they had been low-powered, non-coercive. I agreed to work on a panel to review their ideas."

Greg Mitchem, neighborhood advocate, said: "Here I was talking to some strangers. What are they after? Do they just want to use us for something? We didn't want to be turned into guinea pigs for a project. We wanted to make sure that whoever was put in charge of things at the neighborhood level was someone whose experience wasn't second-hand from the TV.

"We ended up talking that night about our kids and about food and about other things that help you get to know each other a little bit. That's what you have to do if something like that is going to work. Janine ended up asking me to be on a committee and I agreed."

A Lesson Learned

Mark Chambers: "I don't think we knew how to work in communities, in a partnership, I mean, with outside resources. We thought that we were bringing something of value to the neighborhood and we were looking for indigenous leaders. But there was a lot of skepticism at the meeting. I think Mike is wary of a project that comes into the neighborhood but is controlled from the outside. I spoke that night at the wharf and Carl spoke, and there was a slide presentation. And they were excited, but at the same time they had to establish a role for themselves. We talked about things like the exact territory to be covered and who would be eligible for the program. When the question came up as to why the neighborhood hadn't been contacted sooner, we tried to be sensitive to that. We said that we had wanted to get the preliminary work out of the way, and in retrospect, I think that was the right decision. I think we picked the right time to widen the circle."

Mike Mather: "Relationships are about talking and listening. I think that's what they have to learn. A hospital can't act outside its doors the way it does inside its doors. They're an institution, we're a community. Working in this community is about failure because that's just another step to learning what to do. That's hard for a system like a hospital to understand."