Becoming a manager at Eskenazi Health Center Grassy Creek was a lateral move for far-eastside resident Antoniette Wilson, but a deliberate one. “I’ve been a part of this community my whole life,” Wilson says.

When she learned that the Grassy Creek neighborhood had been identified as one of three health equity zones that would benefit from Eskenazi Health’s social determinants of health (SDOH) initiatives, Wilson decided to leave her management position at Eskenazi Health Center Primary Care on the main campus to work there.

“Being able to be a part of that work and leading and serving in my own community, it was personal,” she says. She knew she would be “advocating on two levels”: as a health care leader and as a resident.

Wilson’s role as a resident bolsters her reminders to staff and patients that a neighborhood shouldn’t dictate the quality of care. “We all deserve the same,” Wilson says. Her patients often hesitate to request changes in care because they “feel like they’re complaining,” she says. Wilson disagrees, telling them, “No, you’re advocating for the care that you want, and . . . you have every right to do that.” She knows that society may already be telling far-eastside residents that “because of where you live or where you’re from that you don’t deserve certain things.”

Part of Eskenazi Health’s mission is to counter that message as it builds on its health equity initiatives throughout the city. In nearly thirteen years working for Eskenazi Health, Wilson has observed that while the organization’s efforts to answer community needs evolve, “the culture of serving, it has always remained the same.” She tells potential hires that they can be taught the ropes but that “we can’t give you the passion to serve,” something that has been “present my entire career.”

Passion like Wilson’s is one of the effects of an initiative led by Eskenazi Health Human Resources and Eskenazi Health Talent Acquisition: recruiting employees who live and work within the same community or township as their health center. Wilson sees many benefits to this practice firsthand. She has three medical assistants who speak Haitian Creole in a neighborhood where that language is widely spoken. Their presence helps her staff learn about Haitian culture. Conversations about inclusivity and cultural understanding are, in fact, “a standing agenda item” for her team. It’s also important, Wilson says, for her patients to “have someone here that looks like them.”

Wilson is proud of her “ability to build meaningful connections” with her team and her patients. She calls herself a “living example” of working your way up while struggling to raise and provide for a family as a single mother. “I can connect with my team on so many different levels,” she explains.

One of Wilson’s many aspirations for Eskenazi Health Center Grassy Creek is to extend its lifestyle medicine offerings. She pursued a certification in lifestyle medicine a few years ago to assist her youngest son, who was grieving his grandfather’s loss to the pandemic. The meditation and breathing exercises she learned “allowed me to create space to help my son with some of the grief that he was experiencing at that time,” she says.

After her car failed to start one morning, Wilson thought her colleagues might need what she did that day: a breathing exercise. She introduced one at her primary care leadership meeting. The exercise was so well received, she says, that Dawn Haut, M.D., CEO of Eskenazi Health Center, has requested it be repeated at every meeting.

Lifestyle medicine, Wilson explains, is “trying to teach you to be present.” She’s also learned to do so through a weekly activity she shares with her two sons: skating at the Roller Cave, an eastside institution. Skating, like mind-body medicine, brings her joy: “With so many competing things that take our children and even us away from the present moment, our phones, just everything that comes along with technology . . . . It really requires us to be present. And with me, having teenagers . . . being able to get that time from them, and us just enjoying the moment as they start to branch off, it’s priceless.”

Helping her patients achieve that kind of active presence through lifestyle medicine motivates Wilson, as does her health center’s success in increasing their screenings for SDOH. Whatever comes next, Wilson knows that her role as a resident will aid her in continuing to fight for the health and rights of her community.