Last week, DJ Gadget of 321Media broadcast live at our Wood River Health's Hope Valley site to help us celebrate National Health Center Week. The health center movement started with two pilot sites in Boston and in Mound Bayou, Mississippi 60 years ago in 1965.
The national health center movement, spearheaded by Community Health Centers, aims to provide accessible, affordable and comprehensive primary care to underserved populations. Driven by the Civil Rights Movement and the War on Poverty, it has grown into a vast network serving millions across the United States. Community Health Centers are recognized for their role in addressing health disparities and promoting health equity.
Today, there are 1,400 Community Health Centers across the country, including eight in the state of Rhode Island. One week a year, we celebrate the excellent services health centers provide to our patients and the dedicated staff who work so hard to support the members of our community.
Some excerpts from 321Media's interviews with our staff and community partners are below. The entire three hour podcast is posted on 321Media. There's so much more great content - it's worth a listen!
Dr. Milton Liu - Dentist
Dental health affects your overall health. It's the gateway to your body. If you're not healthy, then you have more severe periodontal disease. And the other way around, too: if you have severe gum disease, then your overall body health is unhealthy.
The simplest way to break it down is: you want to have good oral care and a good diet. The recommendation is twice a day brushing, at least once a day flossing. And if you want to be really picky about it, I think flossing should be first. Get all the stuff out between your teeth and then brush. And then optional steps are going to be, clean your tongue with a tongue scraper and then a mouthwash of some sort.
Basically, it's better for your teeth if you have ten sodas in five minutes than it is to have one soda over five hours. Sipping and snacking are the most dangerous things. Anything sugary or acidic will damage your dental work and also damage your teeth.
Melissa Chapman - Lead Dental Assistant
The favorite part of my job is just taking care of our patients. The job is hard, but I love helping the patient stay calm and get the health care that they need. A lot of patients don’t come to dental because of fear. Fear plays a huge part in health. It is not as scary as it used to be decades ago. We can do this at your own pace. If you don’t want to do it today, that’s okay, we can ease you into it.
Alison Croke - President and CEO
Community Health Centers provide health care to everyone, regardless of your ability to pay. All walks of life, all shapes and sizes! We take insurance, but we also have a sliding fee scale program. If you have lower income and you don’t have any access to health insurance, you can apply for that. It’s very discounted rates, sometimes just a nominal fee of five dollars. We never refuse anyone. If you don’t have your copay or any kind of cost sharing with you that day, we don’t turn you away. We work out payment plans with patients and we never refuse treatment.
Dr. Jonathan Gates, Chief Medical Officer
Express Care is our version of urgent care. Because it is staffed with primary care providers, there are no specialty fees. We have same-day appointments six days a week. Call us at eight o'clock in the morning, you could be in as early as nine o'clock in the morning. We try to staff it Monday through Friday and half a day on Saturdays. It’s part of our strategy to care for the community.
Our view is that if you wind up in the ER, there is probably something we could have done to prevent it. This is one of the ways we do that, by being very available, in addition to scheduling routine care for common conditions or just preventative stuff. If the prevention doesn’t quite work – and half of it is our behavior, half of it is our genes – we treat chronic conditions. Diabetes is a very common condition, high blood pressure, high cholesterol; all of these things can be managed. And once things are under control, you don’t have to see us as often. The best advice to stay out of the hospital is to be proactive about your health. Anything that you can do to keep chronic conditions or other issues that are on a daily basis troubling you: keep them in check, manage them closely, and see us frequently.
Lisa Carcieri - Director of Sales & Marketing, NHPRI
National Health Center Week is an opportunity to highlight all the great work health centers do across the country. This year they are celebrating the 60th anniversary, so it’s a special time.
Neighborhood Health Plan of Rhode Island is a very close partner with health centers and their staff. We appreciate all they do not just for our members but for their communities. We thank and honor the staff who are in the trenches and on the front lines. A lot of the patients are our members so we want to thank them. We also want to thank and recognize all of the patients that come to the health center.
Neighborhood has been around for over 30 years. We were founded by the community health centers and we work closely with the state. We have options for everybody. We meet the person where they are. If we’re not going to be a good fit for you, we will give you resources to help. It doesn’t matter what zip code you live in, the color of your skin, or what gender you are. For 21 years I’ve been at Neighborhood and that’s why I stay.
It’s important to stress the importance of health insurance, and the importance of doing the things you need to do to stay healthy. On the list of priorities for the day, that may be low on this list because you have other considerations. But health insurance is definitely important - and we want to help. Give us a call at (401) 459-6075 or go to our website at NHPRI.org.
Christine King - Senior Director of Integrated Care
What appeals to me about the setting at Wood River Health is all the things that can lead to someone’s best health are right here in one place. Integrated health is an amazing way to look at holistic health and supporting the total person. If you are sad because other things are going on in your life that some behavioral healthcare would help, or you are in some feelings because of a housing issue, job issue, or need a community resource, we can help.
We have a partnership with Gateway, which is our Certified Community Behavioral Health Center in Washington County, to support people who are dealing with substance use issues. We do really deep, collaborative care with them so that regardless of what level of care people may need with a mental health or behavioral health issue, we can help people get connected with all those resources and make that seamlessly happen. We are always looking for ways to be present in the community.
Kat Miller - Director of Care Coordination
We have a highly integrated team at Wood River Health. My team has nurse care management, community resources and community health worker staff. We also have the WIC [Women, Infants and Children] department which serves families in our area. We all work together - and have for many years - to make sure that patients are getting the most care that we can possibly offer. That includes medical, dental care, behavioral health as well as partnering with folks in the community to make sure that patients can get everything that they need to stay healthy.
We also have a couple of partnerships with local shelter programs. We are a housing stabilization provider. We have a van, and we have a bus route that runs through Hope Valley every Tuesday to bring folks to pharmacies, grocery stores, ACE hardware and the YMCA. You can give our main line a call and just ask for any sort of help. We are always here. And if we can’t find it ourselves, we are really good at finding someone who can provide it.
Joe Reddish, Board Chair
If you have a challenge, call. We have resources here at Wood River Health. We may not have the direct answer, but we know at least where to go look for answers. Take advantage of that. Utilize the services. We have an outstanding team here that’s ready to support the community.
We do not turn away patients here at Wood River Health. To offset this cost, we have a yearly gala. This year, our gala will be on the 25th of September at Shepherd's Run. The important part of this is we look for corporate sponsors, individual sponsors, and think of their donation as a way to help their fellow community members. It’s an exciting event – we have an online silent auction with a lot of exciting things and many of the businesses support us highly in that. This is your way of helping other members of the community who are really in need.
Alison Croke - President and CEO
Gala tickets are on sale at WoodRiverHealth.org. If you are a local business, we are definitely in need of silent auction donations and gift cards that we match with a bottle of wine for our Wine Surprise. If you are interested in donating, please contact our Development Director Sarah Channing at SChanning@WoodRiverHealth.org.
Tom Pearce - Director, Westerly Education Center
There’s a lot going on between Wood River Health and the Westerly Education Center. It’s been a great partnership. We recently delivered dental assistant training with Wood River Health. We identified that there was a deficit in the region for dental assistants. Alison got some support from Delta Dental of Rhode Island. We were fortunate to have support from Senator Reed and Senator Whitehouse. We were able to offer the training completely free to participants. That was a really nice thing to be able to do.
We contracted with CCRI to deliver the training, which took place over 14 weeks. Two days a week they were at the Westerly Education Center where the classroom portion took place, and two days a week they were here at Hope Valley for the clinical portion. CCRI was able to place each of the trainees in an externship out into the community. They were really able to put theory to practice. We felt like the cohort was successful. At the end, we were able to graduate 15 students, credentialed, ready to go out into the workplace.
Elena Nicolella - President and CEO, RIHCA
You have heard all morning about what an amazing place Wood River Health is. My job and the job of the Rhode Island Health Center Association is to support all eight health centers [in the state]. You’ve been hearing all day from the people at Wood River Health about how they support their patients. We see ourselves as trying to be of service to help them do their jobs easier.
We work with the health centers to celebrate and raise awareness about these health care facilities that are really different from the way people think about traditional primary care offices. Health centers’ overall approach to healthcare is very different than “what’s your medical issue today”. It’s really about what is happening in your life and how can we respond to that. On the one hand, you have public health that’s focused on the environment and really large issues. On the other side, you have medical clinics that are focused on your, say, diabetes.
Community Health Centers sit in the middle because they are much more holistic. They want to know: how can we help prevent conditions? How can we help you to manage your current conditions? Maybe you are having a hard time getting food for your family – we want to talk to you about that. Or maybe you are feeling depressed – we want to be able to talk to you about that. We want to make it as easy on you as possible to get everything you need.
