Last month ¡Salud! announced Ericka Chavarria, RN, BSN as its new clinical nurse manager. ¡Salud! provides preventive healthcare and education for Willamette Valley vineyard stewards and other agricultural workers, as well as providing support with health care systems, health insurance navigation, and connecting individuals with local social services.

“I’m excited to continue the program and to be able to keep it going as it has been,” Chavarria says.

Chavarria was born in Costa Rica and moved to Las Vegas, Nevada with her family when she was 10. She says that nursing was a natural evolution for her.

“Growing up, I was the caretaker of the family,” Chavarria says. “I like taking care of people.”

Chavarria received an associate of science in nursing degree from the College of Southern Nevada and subsequently a bachelor of science in nursing from Grand Canyon University in Las Vegas. Her first job out of college was on a medical-surgery unit at a Las Vegas area hospital.

Chavarria subsequently worked for two years in the emergency department at Valley Hospital Medical Center in Las Vegas. A trip to Oregon, however, changed the course of her life.

“My husband had the opportunity to come up [to Oregon] for a work trip, I decided to join him for the weekend, and we fell in love with Oregon,” Chavarria says. The couple visited several additional times before ultimately making the move.

“The rain definitely reminded me of home, the trees, the greenery,” Chavarria says. “It’s just so beautiful here.”

Chavarria spent the next five years working as a registered nurse at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland. Looking for a change, she saw a job listing at ¡Salud!.

“A bunch of different things popped out, working with migrant seasonal farm workers, working with underserved populations, a nurse that speaks Spanish,” Chavarria says. She subsequently took a deep dive into what ¡Salud! is all about, watching YouTube videos of interviews and reading about the program’s auction.

“My heart was just pulled to the program, so I knew it was something that I want to be involved with,” she says.

Chavarria has worked at ¡Salud! for the last four years. Though she is just getting started as clinical nurse manager, Chavarria has enjoyed her experiences at at the organization. “It’s definitely a completely different experience from what I was used to in acute care nursing,” she says. “We’re doing outreach, going out to the different vineyards to patients there, and bringing healthcare to them.”

Chavarria takes over from Leda Garside, who retired last year after more than 25 years at ¡Salud!. The Oregon Wine Symposium recently honored Garside for her work.

“I feel like a toddler walking in her shoes,” Chavarria says

¡Salud! is based out of Hillsboro Medical Center. The program is funded by the annual ¡Salud! The Oregon Pinot Noir Auction, hosted by Hillsboro Medical Center Foundation. ¡Salud! was founded in 1992.

Image courtesy of Ericka Chavarria. This article has been updated. 

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