From the Loyola University Chicago Health Sciences Campus

This summer, a group of Loyola faculty and Maywood community members traveled to Los Angeles, to attend the Global Homeboy Network training at Homeboy Industries. Read how the Homeboy Industries approach may help further strengthen the Maywood community.

“What is the role of an academic medical center in a community?” asked Ginny McCarthy, MDiv., director of University Ministry, Health Sciences Campus.  

In August 2019, McCarthy and Amy Luke, PhD, Professor of Public Health Sciences in Parkinson, led a group of 10 people from the Loyola and Maywood communities to Los Angeles to answer that question at the Global Homeboy Network training at Homeboy Industries. 

Father Greg Boyle, SJ, founded Homeboy Industries three decades ago, to help improve the lives of former gang members in East Los Angeles. Since 1988, Homeboy Industries has not only grown to help thousands of people each year, but it has also inspired a network of organizations across the country to find innovative ways of providing hope and training to previously incarcerated men and women. 

Boyle shared his work and mission at Loyola’s Health Sciences Campus in April, inspiring McCarthy and Luke to put together a group of university and community leaders and explore how a similar program might work in Maywood. 

“One of the things I took away from the Global Homeboy gathering was this sense of community and understanding that the absence of community means the absence of support and options,” McCarthy said. It’s a trend she believes is reflected in Maywood, with its shortage of grocery stores, accessible transportation, and employment resources.   Continued...

Village Free Press || Sunday, August 11, 2019 || By Michael Romain || @maywoodnews 

Two weeks after a double homicide rocked Maywood and two mass shootings less than a day apart rocked the nation, U.S. Senator Dick Durbin visited Maywood to discuss his Chicago HEAL initiative — a plan that involves the senator and 10 Chicago area hospitals, including Loyola University Medical Center, collaborating on ways of “strengthening neighborhood engagement to reduce violence and improve health,” according to a summary of the initiative available online.
“People say to me, ‘What are we going to do about the gun violence in America?’ I mean it’s horrible,” said Durbin during a town hall meeting held Aug. 7 at the Lightford Recreation Center, 809 Madison St. in Maywood. “The latest stories are heartbreaking stories.”  Continue to the Village Free Press

VeggieRX provides free vegetables to low-income people and patients in Chicago food deserts

By NICOLE BLACKWOOD   CHICAGO TRIBUNE |
AUG 02, 2019 | 4:02 PM 

Ashley Moore, a resident of Oak Park with limited income, travels to Maywood each Thursday for fresh produce. The trek is not entirely by choice, she said. Affordable vegetables aren’t readily available in her area, and she’s been focused on healthy eating of late. 
But Maywood is a food desert.
 
Cucumbers and squash from the Veggie RX produce stand, grown by Windy City Harvest, in front of Loyola Medical Center in Maywood on Aug 1, 2019. (Stacey Rupolo / for the Chicago Tribune)
VeggieRX, a program implemented by Windy City Harvest, now in partnership with Loyola Medicine and Proviso Partners for Health, has cropped up to fill the void for Maywood residents and individuals like Moore. The program, which now operates year-round, has branches in Austin and North Lawndale, and is currently tied to Loyola’s Maywood clinic.
 
“Rather than waiting for an outside grocery store to come in, or somebody, somewhere, to fix the problem, we asked the question: ‘What could our local Maywood community do to create our own local food system?’” said Lena Hatchett, co-founder of Proviso Partners for Health.