There are an estimated 17,600 migratory and seasonal agricultural workers and their families in the Connecticut River Valley. These essential workers experience tremendous barriers to accessing quality healthcare, such as linguistic and cultural factors, immigration status, long hours of daily work, difficulty navigating the healthcare system, and a transitory lifestyle that makes it difficult to establish a medical home with a primary care provider.
About Us
We partner with health centers and other stakeholders to provide health services and address social determinants of health for the farmworkers who feed the world.
Our Mission
We are passionate about access to quality, community-based care for farmworkers and their families in the Connecticut River Valley. We partner with health centers, and service agencies to provide outreach, primary care, and social services to eligible farmworkers.
Our Approach
Where We Work
Our work is focused in the Connecticut River Valley, the largest agricultural region in New England. The “Valley” extends south from the Massachusetts border with New Hampshire and Vermont through Connecticut to the Long Island Sound. Significant numbers of migratory workers and seasonal agricultural workers enter the Valley each year to plant and harvest crops and reside in these communities. Crops include apples, strawberries, cucumbers, tomatoes, potatoes, leafy greens, pumpkins, peppers and a variety of other fruits and vegetables, as well as nurseries and broadleaf and shade tobacco. The Valley includes sparsely populated rural areas and cities with suburban communities.
Our Team
Lia Spiliotes
Senior Director, CRVFHPcrvfhp@massleague.orgLia Spiliotes is an innovative, forward-looking, operationally oriented healthcare strategist and chief executive officer. Her more than 3-decade career has centered on the industry’s healthcare manufacturing and provider delivery sectors. She has deep experience in business turnarounds, growth and market expansion, strategic partnerships, operational optimization, and building high-performance executive teams and boards. Ms. Spiliotes has served as CEO of several federally qualified health centers (FQHC) in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. Most recently she served as the CEO of Community Health Programs in Great Barrington.
Erica Hastings
Senior Manager, CRVFHPcrvfhp@massleague.org(508) 365-6357Erica has worked serving special populations in healthcare for 18 years. Notably, during her 10 years at the Boston Center for Refugee Health & Human Rights at Boston Medical Center, Erica developed and implemented the first known Patient Navigator Program tailored to refugees and asylum seekers in the United States. More recently, she served as the Program Coordinator for the Nurse Practitioner and Postdoctoral Psychology Residency programs at Community Health Center, Inc.’s Weitzman Institute, in Middletown, CT. Erica received her Bachelor of Science in Anthropology at the College of Charleston in South Carolina and Masters in International Health Care Management, Economics, and Policy from Bocconi University in Milan, Italy.
Kevin O’Neall
Executive Assistant & Project Manager, CRVFHPcrvfhp@massleague.orgKevin joined the CRVFHP in February, 2023 to provide administrative and project management support. He has a strong track record of operational improvement with 9 years of experience in operations and project management. He is skilled at identifying creative solutions through analysis, communication and coordination.
Maggie Sullivan, DrPH, FNP-BC
Clinical Consultant, CRVFHPcrvfhp@massleague.orgMaggie supports the delivery of high-quality health services to agricultural workers in her role as a Clinical Consultant. Maggie is a family nurse practitioner and director of the Oasis Clinic, a multicultural immigrant-friendly clinic at Boston Health Care for the Homeless. She is also a postdoctoral research fellow at the FXB Center for Health & Human Rights at Harvard University and instructor with the Initiative on Health & Homelessness at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Maggie graduated with a Doctor of Public Health degree from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in May 2020. She conducts forensic evaluations with Harvard Medical School’s Asylum Network and MGH’s Asylum Clinic and has also collaborated with Partners in Health in Chiapas, Mexico and Guatemala. She received her B.A. from Barnard College in comparative religion and art history. She later completed a master’s in nursing science at the University of California – San Francisco, with a sub-specialty in women’s health. In 2005, Maggie completed a fellowship in farmworker health in the Salinas Valley of California.
Diana Mora Bermejo
Coordinator, CRVFHPDiana Mora Bermejo started her tenure as a Health Career Connections intern, and transitioned into a full-time position in September, 2021. Diana graduated from Providence College in May, 2021 with majors in Global Studies, and, Health Policy & Management, with a minor in Public and Community Service Studies. She is passionate about working towards eliminating inequities, having worked and done research on projects on casteism in India, public health in Gaza, Palestine, and displacement along the Mexico – United States border. During her time at Providence College, she worked with her local community while interning at Connect for Health, and Providence Housing Authority which led her to understand the importance of working within communities towards change. She is working towards a career in public health for a more equitable, and culturally and linguistically appropriate health care system.
Jerel Novick
Data Analyst, CRVFHPJerel joined the CRVFHP in 2022 and brings with him a diverse experience in data science, finance and relationship management. His focus is on maintaining and improving the quality of CRVFHP data along with developing methods to increase efficiencies in processing.