Like all Hometown Heroes, Donna Toomey is always ready to help somebody in need. In her case, however, the need is often very specific.

While she does plenty of other volunteering, such as packing food boxes at the Northfield-Tilton Pantry every week, Toomey’s specialty is guiding people through the snarled maze of our health care and health insurance landscape.

“We have a growing homeless population that doesn’t understand insurance, Medicaid, how to get the health care they need,” said Toomey, who lives in Tilton. “There’s such a need in all communities to help people understand what the services are and what they’re entitled to.”

Toomey started learning about the systems two decades ago as a patient advocate for a federally qualified health center and more recently by working as a certified Navigator helping people getting health insurance through the Affordable Care Act. Now she does it as a volunteer after the Navigator contract went to another firm last year.

Much of her help comes through Archways, a family support organization that Toomey has been part of since it began eight years ago. It now has four offices, in Concord, Tilton, Franklin and Plymouth.

Archways often deals with people struggling to fill out forms, or knowing what forms to fill out, or even knowing what sort of help exists let alone how to get that help. This is where Toomey comes in.

“Employees there, if they have questions they’ll call me. If I need to meet someone I can always go there,” she said. Of course, technology helps: “I do emails, text messages, phone calls. I do a lot of my work remotely.

“If it’s something I can’t do right now, I know who to call and who to contact and say, ‘Can you help these people?’” she added.

She also works with other institutions such as Isaiah 61 Cafe in Laconia.

Toomey’s efforts are a reminder that information is often people’s biggest need when they’re struggling, and providing that information can be harder than providing food, clothing or other essentials.

“Over the last 25 years I’ve just kept learning,” Toomey said. “There’s always something new to learn.”

Toomey’s friend Pat Tucker, who nominated her, says she is “tireless in helping others.”

“She knows everything there is to know about medical insurance and has helped many people sign up in order to get the most effective insurance,” she wrote. “She is an excellent cook and often times when she is helping, food is somehow involved. … She has excellent organizational skills which is very useful as she helps with different projects around town.”

Toomey said her experience has led her to understand how much help many people need to get health care because of our complicated health-insurance system.

“I’m a little concerned about a lot of the changes coming – it takes forever to get into a doctor. … I hope New Hampshire keeps the expanded Medicaid program. If that goes away, we’re going to have thousands of people who need to get insured,” she said.

Whatever happens, however, Toomey won’t hold back. “I like being in the community. I like helping people.”

David Brooks can be reached at dbrooks@cmonitor.com