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Sept 3, 2010
MANILA – Aida Gaffud Trinidad is currently a Senior Public Service Administrator (SPSA) at the Illinois Department of Public, Health Care Facilities and Programs. To people in the healthcare industry, her name has a special ringtone to it. She is, after all, the Illinois Department of Health official who provides or conducts education and training for providers and surveys staff on all Home Health/OASIS related issues. She also gives regulatory interpretation to the general public as needed as well as provide supervisory oversight for certification and surveys activities on programs of Home Health, Hospice, OPT/ST, CORF, Rural Health Clinic and other programs as needed.
A significant part of Aidas job includes interacting with, and on occasion, representing the Department to the Home Health Advisory Board and participating in rule making initiatives. She also liaises with the state provider group organization, Federal and other State Agencies relative to OASIS/Home Health Issues.
Aida had actively participated on an ad hoc committee (Big 8) convened by the Centers for Medicare/Medicaid Services for the implementation of the OASIS initiatives, which included the OBQI process.
Aida is a certified HFSN in Home Health, Hospice, OPT/ST, CORF, Rural Health Clinic, etc. She was also a member of the Technical Expert Panel (TEP), for the revision of the home health agency survey protocols (through a joint effort by CMS and the Center for Health Research at the University of Colorado).
Aida takes pride in having served one term as member of the Professional and Technical Advisory Committee (PTAC), Joint Commission, representing the Association of Health Facility Survey Agencies (AFHSA).
Its this broad range of knowledge and influence in the current conduct and future of the healthcare industry that makes Aidas position even more critical. Her views and inputs in these meetings can help shape the direction to which the state and the federal government can go in developing and adopting policies and legislations affecting the entire industry and in hindsight, the future of home health and other related businesses, a significant number of which are owned by Filipino American nurses and entrepreneurs. It feels good to know though that someone with integrity, intellectual credibility and wealth of experience in the field like Aida Trinidad gets to be where she is right now.
Simple Pleasures
“Please make it simple,” Aida emailed me at the end of her reply to my online interview. She was actually referring to the feature story I was to write about her for our Profiles of Excellence, a commemorative book on the 16th Gintong Pamana Golden Legacy Awards Night Gala. “So typical of Aida,” I told myself.
Its baffling sometimes how well I seem to know someone I had met only once. But it was time long enough to allow me the chance to see her in probably one of her most comfortable settings. She was one of our speakers at the 2006 Empowerment Conference of NaFFAA ILs Circle of Empowered Women, to which she had also been “ambushed” to get inducted as member. As a speaker, Aida shines like she most probably did in all of the conferences and seminars where was tasked to speak, often on her field of expertise. Yet even when she simply talks about mundane things like her other interests, such as her garden, gourmet cooking, travel, reading or just talking about her childhood in Echague, Isabela, Aida can be engaging.
Reminiscing her early years in her hometown Echague conjures up images of life blessed by natures bounty, parental love, discipline and family solidarity. In a Chicago Sun Times feature story published Thursday, September 29, 1994 titled, “Pacific Pleasures,” Aidas love of nature and culinary skills suddenly found a generous expression and public forum that before then, might have been known only to her and her familys close circle of friends.
The article talked about the native fruits in their backyard mangoes, papayas, tamarind, chicos, atis, limes and how Aida and her siblings would simply pick them up from the ground and feast on them. Aidas home in Lombard captures her love of nature in the lush vegetable garden her father tends to as soon as it was climate ready to plant. Spring and summer showcase Aidas flower garden in all its splendor. And tending to her flowers when time permits is a time luxurious therapy that gets her up each day, especially on weekends, no matter the hard days night. I believe it is Aidas indulgence in lifes simple pleasures that affords her a nice balance between the demands of her profession and the expectations of her private life.
Growing up Gaffud
Much of what Aida Trinidad is today can be traced back to her solid foundation as a child and her loving but strict parental upbringing. The eldest child in a brood of five, Aida learned the value of education, hard work and achievements from the very persons that epitomize them, her father, Cenon C. Gaffud, a CPA and her mother, Visitacion M. Gaffud, a Home Economics Teacher. Aida recalled her father talking to her and her siblings before going away to high school and college, reminding them of the importance of giving their best in everything they do. “I think this is why I always work hard in any endeavor that is placed on my plate,” Aida muses.
Aidas academic record and co-curricular activities and her stellar career as a nurse and health official were a testimony to her aforementioned statement and the wonderful job her parents had done not just for her but for her four other siblings as well. Antonio Gaffud, also a Registered Nurse, is a HFSN at the IDPH (LTC). Rita Gaffud-Schubert, another nurse, is a HFSN at IDPH (HCFP). Maria Gaffud, who holds a degree in Mathematics is a full time mom and Jonji Gaffud, a graduate of Culinary Arts, is Chef de Cuisine at Medinah Golf Club.
On her part, Aidas thirty-five (35) years of experience as a nurse records a steady rise into different respected positions of responsibility. She has been with the IDPH first, as a health facility surveillance nurse in 1991.
She is also a CMS certified Health Facility Surveillance Nurse, Home Health, Hospice, Hospital, End Stage Renal Disease, Rural Health Clinic and Ambulatory Surgical Treatment Centers. Aida is also a Certified OASIS Specialist, Clinical (COS-C) by the OASIS Certificates and Competency Board, Inc.
The Gaffud Family. From left, Jonji (the youngest of 5), Maria “Tess” , 4th child, Rita 3rd, Dad Cenon and Mom Visitacion, Antonio (2nd) and Aida (the eldest of 5).
There is something more Aida wants to give credit to for what she is and that is her Yogad culture. Yogads are a pre-colonial indigenous tribe that inhabited the town of Echague, Isabela and are said to have fought the longest against the Spanish colonization and conversion to Christianity.
They eventually assimilated into the Spanish influenced Filipino culture but retained much of what was unique in their culture. One such unique feature is their own Yogad language which they speak to this day. Aida attributes her strong sense of independence to her Yogad heritage.
Moving Forward
Having gone this far in her career, Aida says she is content, not needing any more material stuff and recognizing more her role as a wife, mother, co-worker, a friend, a sister, a leader and yes, a follower. Her life with husband Donald Trinidad has been happy and mightily blessed with two good, loving children: Joseph Mark who is now gainfully employed as an IT tech and James Matthew, who just recently graduated from De Paul University with a degree in Commerce, major in Management/Information Systems. Being a cancer survivor, she looks at her life now from a different perspective.
Aida’s family, from left: Joseph Mark, Aida, husband Donald and James Mathew with
girlfriend, Missy.
She indulges much more in lifes simple pleasures, more like the stuff retirement life is made of. Traveling with Donald whenever they can, cooking meals together, sharing housework he doing the laundry while she gardens and he watching TV as she social networks (FB) in the quiet confines of her den.
Aida enjoys being a member of the service team of elders at the Holy Trinity, Our Lady of Fatima Prayer Group in Lombard and always thanks God for the opportunity to serve Him through these various groups and her monthly Marian ministry. She finds fulfillment too in participating in medical missions, like the one done by the Cagayan Valley Circle of Chicago, of which she is a member. She also participates in and looks forward to the annual “yogad” gatherings and declares how proud she is to be a “Yogad.”
Does she ever dream of something more in life? Not really. She responds, “maybe to learn how to swim… travel more, or maybe just spend a lazy day in a hammock with a good book?” Then she quips, “Bring on the good life.” In retrospect, while Aida wants me to keep her story simple, there is just no way to simplify or downplay the life of one Renaissance woman like her.