Chronic Illness Sufferers Find Support in Program

July 17, 2010— -- Gwen Dotson is no stranger to pain. For the last seven years Dotson, from Humboldt, California, has endured Takayasu's arteritis, a rare autoimmune disease.

The disease, which affects the arteries, causes Dotson to experience constant fatigue and generalized aches and pains throughout her body. The cause is unknown, and though there are treatments to help ameliorate symptoms, there is no known cure.

"Because of my illness I had to stop working, which I had done for 25 years," Dotson said. "I began to question the purpose of my life."

Dotson said she felt extremely isolated because her disease was so rare, and felt people didn't and couldn't understand her, causing her to become even more reclusive.

That changed in early 2009, when Dotson answered a newspaper advertisement inviting people with chronic illnesses and their caretakers to attend a free workshop.

After her first visit to the workshop she decided to continue through the free six-week program, called "Our Pathways to Health" -- Pathways, for short -- run by the Community Health Alliance of Humboldt-Del Norte, Inc (CHA).

She liked it so much she went through the workshops a second time.

"It's kind of like reading a good book twice; you pick up different things up the second time," she said.

Dotson said that even though other people she met through the program did not have the same illness, they faced a lot of the same challenges. Talking with them helped her to connect and overcome her isolation. She eventually went on to become a leader of a workshop.

"Pathways helped me to have the satisfaction of helping others, giving my life a new sense of value," she said.

A non-profit community group, the CHA serves Humboldt county, a community of about 130,000 located in rural northern California among towering sequoias. The CHA has run the Pathways program since 2009 with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) in an initiative called Aligning Forces for Quality. RWJF has supported this initiative in 16 other communities nationwide.