Our Hometown
Nashua | Diversity and Mental Health
Clip | 5m 42sVideo has Closed Captions
Lisa Velasquez speaks about the need for access to services for all the neighborhoods.
Lisa Velasquez speaks about the need for access to services for all the neighborhoods of Nashua.
Our Hometown is a local public television program presented by NHPBS
Our Hometown
Nashua | Diversity and Mental Health
Clip | 5m 42sVideo has Closed Captions
Lisa Velasquez speaks about the need for access to services for all the neighborhoods of Nashua.
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One of my favorite memories is moving to Nashua in my senior year of high school.
I was not happy just because of relocation at that moment in time.
But one of the memories that just sticks out in my mind is walking to the bus stop and having people say good morning in on the way to the bus stop and stop me on my tracks.
Because in New York City, people don't talk to you and having people say good morning.
Like, that's just a memory that sticks out of like how neighborly and friendly Nashuans are.
So that's one of my favorite memories of being in Nashua, specifically.
I've been at the Division of Public Health for over eight years, almost nine.
And the work has really changed from when I started to now.
I started as the Substance Misuse Prevention coordinator, and I really focused on substance misuse prevention programs, things like parenting classes and mostly education on the opioid crisis.
Because when I started, that was like the priority, and that's what everybody was talking about.
So I was doing, going around not only in Nashua but the surrounding towns and doing like, you know, opioid forums and talking to people about the dangers of opioids and what was going on and how we could support our youth in maintaining or preventing them from starting to use.
And I think the thing that has changed over time is that more and more of my presentations and talks are in diverse languages than when I started.
I think that's the most stark thing that when I think about the community in Nashua, it's changed.
But not only has it changed, but the Latino community specifically is a lot more vocal and says, Hey, you're missing me if we're not talking to them.
So I think that's the biggest takeaway for me is that I'm Latina.
I can't not listen to the Latino community and they're very loud and clearly say, I'm here and we need services and equitable access to not just services, but also health information.
So the diversity in Nashua has grown.
I mean, I've seen it grow since like graduating high school.
We had the Latino, like the Spanish club or the Latino club, and it was really small.
And now I think it's about over 20% of the students are of Latino descent.
So I think that's beautiful.
But there's also diversity, not just within the Latino community, but there's also other communities in Nashua, like a beautiful Indian American community.
There's Native Americans.
There's, you know, African-American community.
There's some refugees from Africa that also have settled here.
So they all bring different foods.
I always bring up food because I love food, but also different languages, different music, different just ways of interacting with each other.
And I find that my coworkers, whether they're from Brazil or they're from the Congo or from Puerto Rico, they're just all very welcoming.
They want to share their food, they want to share their experiences, they want to share their culture.
And it's just beautiful, to learn a little bit more.
And I think I'm just curious in nature that I want to learn a little bit more about everything.
So one of the projects that we're working on is a podcast about mental health that's called Speaking Our Minds.
It's a podcast in five different languages.
So I was able to learn welcome in five languages.
So I'm really excited about that.
But it's just one of the things I think that not just in American culture but in all cultures, we don't talk enough about, we don't talk enough about our mental health.
So we need to bring a lot of culture, cultural, culturally relevant information, culturally sensitive information, and culturally accurate information to people.
So that is really a challenge when you're working with five different languages and five different cultures to make sure that you're not just telling people like, this is the diagnosis, these are signs and symptoms and you need to get help.
But culturally, how do we talk about these things already?
Because we all know that mental health is a thing, whether we want to, whether we see it in from the spiritual lens, whether we see it from that moral lens or whether we see it from like a diagnosable like medical lens, we all see it.
We just might talk about it and experience it in a different way.
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Our Hometown is a local public television program presented by NHPBS