Imagine for a moment that your goal is to lose weight. You are put in a room without gym equipment, instruction, and healthy foods but with unlimited access to junk food. No matter how determined you are, you find that it is impossible to achieve your goal because your environment has set you up to fail. The same applies to every aspect of our neighbors’ health in a ‘food desert’ like Southeast Dallas: How can we expect our neighbors to be healthy if they do not have access to the tools to help them get healthy?
At Jubilee, we know that healthy individuals come from healthy communities. Growing up in the Jubilee Park neighborhood, Alejandra Saldaña has seen firsthand how Dallas’s historic under-investment in South Dallas communities leads to grim health outcomes.
Work hard, play harder
Access to a green space directly impacts health outcomes like life expectancy and health status. Although 47.6% and 46.4% of Latinos and African Americans do not meet federal exercise guidelines, they are also less likely to live within walking distance to a park. The soccer fields, basketball courts, walking track, and playground at Jubilee Park provide our neighbors with the only safe place to walk, run, and play in the area.
“People in my family are diabetic,” Alejandra explains, recounting how she watched, helpless, as chronic illness and poor health devastated her family. This experience sparked an interest in health early on, driving her to earn a B.S in Health and Exercise Science from Syracuse University. It wasn’t until she returned to Dallas in 2017 that she realized that her family’s suffering was not isolated, but rather part of a disturbing pattern in Southeast Dallas.
As Community Support Specialist at Jubilee, Alejandra realized how similar her experience was to so many of her clients that she was serving. When a mother told her she needed help getting to the grocery store, Alejandra empathized. Had she herself not spent entire mornings driving from corner store to corner store in search of fresh milk? “I am focused on health inequities. Our neighbors deserve to live a well-rounded, healthy life.” How could her neighbors ever achieve true wellness if so much of their time and energy was spent trying to access the most basic of resources?
5 Key Facts
In the following months, Alejandra’s interest in health ignited into a passion, and when Jubilee announced its plan to grow its Health pillar, it was clear to all that Alejandra should lead the newly established Health and Wellness department. Expanding on Jubilee’s existing healthcare services and nutrition support for families was a key focus of 2020 as Jubilee drastically scaled up meal distribution and offered ongoing pop-up clinics throughout the pandemic. In fact, at the height of the economic crisis in June and July, Jubilee distributed 2,000 meals and groceries a week to our Jubilee Park neighbors.
Under Alejandra’s leadership, Jubilee will continue to grow its Health Pillar in 2021, starting with the revitalization of Jubilee’s youth athletics program and the further expansion of our healthcare services.
“I am taking an equity-focused perspective in our Health programs at Jubilee. Bringing health justice to our neighbors-- that is the end goal, our North Star.”