Maria Montanaro’s health message is thunderous

by Reza Corinne Clifton

Women are an integral part of the poverty chain.  Therefore addressing their needs is a good place to start.

The next time you are thinking about going to Thundermist Health Center, consider going south.  Not to the South County Thundermist site in South Kingstown; “way south of the border,” to their site in Honduras. 

The Hombro a Hombro Clinica (Shoulder to Shoulder Clinic) in the city of Pinares de San Luis Centro – in Intibuca, Honduras – is Thundermist’s “new access point 5000 miles away.” At least that is how it is described by Maria Montanaro, MSW, the president/CEO of Thundermist. 

But how did a non-profit community health center go global, especially one already serving three communities in Rhode Island – Woonsocket, West Warwick, and South County? And who is Montanaro anyway – besides an adventurer, mountain climber, and recently-learned Spanish-speaker? 

Montanaro was interviewed for the top position at Thundermist in 1997, and she found her selection to be a grand victory. It came after a self-driven and -created career makeover, a repositioning of domestic and family roles, and ten years of paying dues in an almost entirely new field. Three months into what was finally the “right opportunity,” Montanaro was diagnosed with breast cancer. 

At the time “we were blowing things up,” remembers Montanaro, for they were relocating the Woonsocket office and primary care center to a new and refurbished location. While desks and equipment had to be moved, Montanaro’s will and desire would not. “I wasn’t prepared to give the job up.”

Crediting her board, employees, and colleagues for the support and flexibility they extended, she describes moving to a 4-day week in year one; it was during her treatment phase. With the flexibility to work from home as well, she squeezed in those days of work between 4 surgeries, chemotherapy and radiation therapy. Her year two schedule remained the same as she slowly built up her strength during the rest and recovery period of fighting the cancer. The same cannot be said of Thundermist – at least not the “remained the same” part. 

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Under Montanaro’s 12 years of leadership – including in those first two – Thundermist has grown in several ways. The employee count has risen from 65 to 200, she reports, while the number of patients served has risen by 17,000. But her biggest addition might be their global health project, which has essentially given Thundermist a fourth site. 

“I was interested in starting a global health initiative,” says Montanaro, though she acknowledges that the move was unusual. It was not strange to her, though. In her former career life as a teacher, she had traveled to impoverished regions with students doing mission work with her school-employer. This time she saw aspirations and extractable lessons that could be applied to her work in healthcare.

To accomplish the project Montanaro needed partners, who she found over time in the nongovernmental organization Hombro a Hombro (Shoulder to Shoulder) and in the students, physicians and researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University.

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As she describes the partnership in Honduras, it is clear that Montanaro’s interests are not only medical. Thundermist helped introduce the area they serve to a water filtration system, while her Honduran patients helped erect the entire Shoulder to Shoulder Clinic in Pinares. Several of Montanaro’s employees have been one or more times, along with some of her board members, including one who fell in love during an initial visit.  She also says the program is helping to attract and retain staff at Thundermist, and even introduces me to Donna Needham, a nurse who recently returned from one of their “health brigades.”

But Montanaro may, at least momentarily, be most excited about their work with the local young women. “Yo Puedo” is a program Thundermist helped Shoulder to Shoulder set up to help build the esteem and confidence levels of the girls and young women they serve in Pinares. As they did work in the community, explains Montanaro, they noticed women making all of the health decisions. Yet “the power of women” in that community was very low, with many women leaving school after 4th or 5th grade. 

But women are “an integral part” of the poverty chain, says Montanaro. Therefore “addressing their needs is a good place to start.” The program emphasizes empowering young women by focusing on the development of skills in group leadership, critical thinking, and problem-solving. 

First, says Montanaro, it was transformation with the clinic. “Now it is women’s empowerment.”

And this is not too dissimilar to what Thundermist does – at least as Montanaro explains it. Many of the centers patients are classifiable as low-income, she says, needing services that include and extend beyond health. But primary care delivery at Thundermist, says Montanaro, often means referrals and connections for those issues.

“Empowerment is key” in both locations, she reflects. “It may not be water filtration…but [Thundermist locally] is closing disparities.”        

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For more information about Thundermist Health Center, visit www.thundermisthealth.org. For more information about Hombro a Hombro (Shoulder to Shoulder), visit www.shouldertoshoulder.org. To learn more about breast cancer, visit www.breastcancer.org, www.cancer.gov, or www.mayoclinic.com.

From left, Maria Montanaro visits the Thundermist site in Honduras; Honduras recollections from Donna Needham, a pediatric nurse manager at Thundermist Health Center in Woonsocket; and Thundermist Hombro a Hombra Clinica in Honduras.

Honduras photos courtesy of Thundermist
Needham photo, middle, by Clifton
she shines interview
Maria Montanaro, Thundermist Health Center
global health project