NORC Nurse Betty Hilleman: Impacting a Life, a Neighborhood, a Community

In the same Lower East Side neighborhood where VNS Health founder Lillian Wald and her team of nurses went door to door more than 130 years ago, VNS Health’s Betty Hilleman is doing much the same thing today.

Betty works as a community health nurse at Educational Alliance’s Co-Op Village NORC (Naturally Occurring Retirement Community). It’s one of 43 NORCs in New York City where VNS Health provides nursing services to older residents of a housing development or apartment complex.”

Five days a week, from 9 to 5, Betty is at Co-Op Village, mostly making home care visits but also, from time to time, attending Bingo sessions and sing-a-longs, or chatting with residents over coffee. She does these social activities so that when someone in the NORC  has a health or wellness crisis, they already know her and feel comfortable approaching her.

 “I interact with the residents all the time, and they come to understand that I’m a person to be trusted,” she says. “They know I’m knowledgeable.”

That interaction is especially crucial for what Betty calls “the big cases,” like that of 80-year-old Tanya*, who last year was showing unexplained weight loss.

Concerned about Tanya’s weight loss, Betty got to work. Through a series of conversations with Tanya, she learned that Tanya’s son, who suffered from drug addiction, had stolen money from Tanya. As a result, Tanya was going without food. Worse still, her finances were a mess, her housing was threatened, and she was sinking into a depression.

Together with the building’s social worker, Betty helped secure medical care for Tanya’s malnutrition, counseling for her depression, and physical therapy to regain her strength. Betty also connected Tanya with Meals on Wheels and helped her home health aides learn to make high-nutrition shakes.

On the social services front, Betty and the social worker contacted Adult Protective Services to address the situation with Tanya’s son. She and the social worker also worked with a mortgage company to help Tanya avoid eviction.

With continued care and oversight, Tanya is “doing brilliantly,” says Betty. “She’s able to go on living in her own home safely and with confidence and autonomy.”

Tanya is just one of many Co-Op seniors Betty has helped in countless ways, whether it’s advising a resident whose husband has dementia, stopping by the apartment of someone recently discharged from the hospital to make sure he’s eaten breakfast that day, or helping another resident overcome his antisocial tendencies by finding him a volunteer job that keeps him connected to the community.

Like her predecessor Lillian Wald, Betty has a talent and passion not only for nursing but also for rooting herself deep in the lives of New Yorkers and positively impacting a life, a neighborhood, a community—and the residents of the Co-Op Village NORC are healthier because of her.

 “Being a nurse in a community setting,” she says, “you have a much fuller sense of who a person is.  When you walk into someone’s home, you walk into their life.”

* The client’s name has been changed for privacy.