When Grant Cassavant walked into Brittni Abbett's office in late November 2025, he was in crisis.

“I would call it an emergency situation,” Grant said.

He was living in a van with his dog, Ember, trying to prepare for a long and unforgiving northern Minnesota winter. With temperatures set to drop below zero, the situation felt increasingly urgent.

Brittni, a community health worker (CHW) at the Essentia Health-Virginia Clinic, didn’t just hand him a list of phone numbers. She sat down with him and began mapping out a plan.

Over the next several weeks, Brittni provided hands-on, weekly guidance to help Grant move from instability to security. Together, they navigated housing applications, insurance paperwork, SNAP benefits, legal resources, furniture assistance and child-support budgeting. Brittni helped him understand complex forms, track deadlines and stay focused when the process felt overwhelming.

“I would just pull another resource out of my hat and keep going, which is why Grant started referring to me as Mary Poppins,” Brittni recalled.

For Grant, having that steady support made all the difference.

Applying for housing, he said, can feel like you’re at the end of the road. The paperwork is daunting. The waiting is stressful. And starting over with multiple agencies can be dispiriting.

What made Essentia’s program different, he said, was the seamless connection between medical care and social support. He could go from a doctor’s visit to Brittni’s office in the same clinic without having to start over from scratch at individual service agencies.

Brittni’s encouragement and problem-solving extended past clinic hours.

When Grant asked her to provide a daily 9 a.m. wake-up call, Brittni came up with a different idea: to place his phone across the room so he’d have to get up to shut his alarm off, with a sticky note next to it that read, “Grant, get out of bed.”

Brittni joined Essentia’s CHW program in January 2025 after working as a family mentor and early childhood educator. Those roles prepared her to help individuals and families work through complicated systems and access community resources.

She believes being part of Essentia Health strengthens her advocacy.

“There’s power behind the name,” she said.

Today, Grant and Ember are settled into a new home. While he has officially graduated from the CHW program, he still checks in with Brittni to make sure he stays on track with finances and services.

Each time he left her office during those early weeks, he felt something he hadn’t felt in a while.

“Hope,” he said. “Without this community program, I really don’t know what I would have done.”

For Brittni, stories like Grant’s reflect the heart of community health work — meeting people where they are and walking alongside them until they can stand on solid ground again.