Farmworkers’ advocate heads to Yale for master’s in public health

When Rosa González dreamed about what she wanted to be when she grew up, she pictured the quintessential image of a doctor in a white lab coat.

Her idea of what a career in health care looked like began to shift, however, when she started an internship at UC Davis, where she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in human development in 2013.

As a sexual health assistant for the university’s Student Health and Counseling Services Department, she worked directly with students to educate them about safer sex practices, consent and topics related to their overall well-being.

“My mentality changed from wanting to help those individuals that were sick to wanting to prevent them from getting sick,” said González, who lives in Windsor. “I discovered that I didn’t necessarily have to go to medical school to help my community. I could choose a different route.”

After spending the majority of the past eight years helping improve the well-being of countless Sonoma County residents, González, 32, will continue on that path when she starts Yale University’s Master of Public Health program in September.

Her completion of the graduate program would add to a long list of firsts she’s accomplished within her family.

She’s the eldest of three and her parents did not receive any formal education past elementary school in their home state of Guanajuato, Mexico, where González lived until moving to Sonoma County at 7 years old, she said.

Part of what’s motivated her to seek a career in public health is seeing the experiences of her relatives who are agricultural workers, including her dad, González said.

The physically demanding, sometimes dangerous work takes a toll on their bodies, though the country’s health care system is sometimes difficult for them to access and navigate, she said.

“I’ve seen many times where folks in power, it’s that disconnect between the community and the work that they’re offering the community,” González said. “I want to be different. I want to be the change.”

Those she’s helped so far include farm laborers and domestic workers at the Graton Day Labor Center, where she currently works part time as a program manager.

Christy Lubin, the director of the Graton Day Labor Center, said González has had a keen focus on boosting the quality and frequency of the health care the center’s workers receive.

González began working at the center in 2014, first as a health program coordinator and dual organizer for the center’s Women’s Action and Solidarity group, a domestic worker advocacy program.

Those roles put her at the center of local, regional and statewide meetings with coalitions and other organizations interested in advancing protections and rights for domestic workers while simultaneously developing healthier habits workshops for the center’s workers, González said.

Her connections with the Santa Rosa Family Medicine Residency brought doctors in training to the center, where they were able to provide workers regular health checkups via a mobile clinic. The collaboration came to an abrupt end in 2017, when the residency program’s van burned in the Tubbs fire, Lubin said.

González had left for another job a year prior to the fire, though the program lived on. When González returned to the center to work part-time as a program manager in February, she didn’t miss a step, Lubin said.

Vaccine access for Sonoma County’s agricultural workers was just starting to ramp up the day González returned. Still, González was prepared with a spreadsheet that helped the center schedule and track the vaccination of about 200 members and their neighbors within a month, Lubin said.

“Rosa has been doing this since she was a child,” Lubin said. “Advocating for her own family in accessing education systems, medical systems … in this country has really prepared her for who she is today, and now she’s doing it for her whole community, not just her family, as a professional.”

González left the job in Graton in 2016, picking up work as the program director for the Boys & Girls Clubs of Central Sonoma County at the Cali Calmécac Language Academy, where she oversaw staff that cared for 150 kindergarten to middle school students for nearly three years.

She called the experience one of the most rewarding in her career.

“I was working with the children of vineyard workers. … I saw myself as a little girl,” González said. “I wanted to be an example for them, that if they wanted to go to college, they could.”

González then worked as a bilingual health educator at the Center for Well-Being nonprofit in Santa Rosa for a year until August 2020, five months after the pandemic had altered daily life in Sonoma County.

She was burned out, but also recognized an opportunity to finally pursue her dream of earning a graduate degree.

“It was a mix of everything,” González said of her decision to start the graduate school application process. “It was the mix of the pandemic happening and seeing how the pandemic was impacting my community. It was seeing the lack of bilingual health professionals.”

About seven months later, she received admission letters from public health programs at three schools: the University of Michigan, Yale and New York University.

After seeking advice from her peers and speaking with Yale faculty and staff, she picked the university, which offered to cover 70% of her tuition costs.

While the assistance will help ease the financial burden of attending the two-year program, she’ll need to make up about $90,000 to cover the rest of her remaining tuition, living, medical and other miscellaneous expenses while she’s in school, González said.

For her, the cost will be worth it.

“It’s an Ivy League school, and I know that it’s going to open up so many doors — windows for that matter,” González said. “I’m going to be part of a few that have graduated from this university.”

Melita Love is the founder of Farm to Pantry, an organization that gathers leftover food from farms and gardens and reroutes them to families in need of fresh produce. González currently serves as a co-chair of the group’s board after first joining six years ago.

González said she signed up to work with the nonprofit because she remembered going to the food bank as a child to pick up canned items, an example of the barriers that exist within the Latino community to access to fresh foods, she said.

González’s lived experiences and determination to get tasks done are among the reasons she’s been such great asset for the board, Love said.

“Wherever she goes, she’s going to be this amazing shining light because of the determination she has and her willingness to go out to share it,” Love said.

You can reach Staff Writer Nashelly Chavez at 707-521-5203 or nashelly.chavez@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @nashellytweets.