Hey everyone,

We had our first open house at 60 Valley Street today! For pictures, here’s the website link: http://gallery.me.com/anniedg#100459

What we did  - we planned, we prepared, we opened our doors to anyone and everyone who needed health care screening, today August 21, 2010, from 8 AM to 1 pM at 60 Valley Street. We had glucose checks, cholesterol checks, ask the doc, and BMI measurements.

Who we saw  - we saw grandmothers. We saw daughters. We saw out of work construction workers. We saw hardworking citizens of Rhode Island who could not afford the copay for insurance at their job. We saw painters. We saw nutritionists, and accountants who were laid off, and had no further health care.  We did blood sugars, cholesterols, BMI’s, and booked them in to see us if they didn’t have health insurance.

It was a wonderful team effort – everyone at their post, able to see one patient every 10 or so minutes . . .

What we learned – that we have lots of willing volunteers. We’re definitely ready to see patents and run health fairs. We have a great group of volunteers. The clinic looked wonderful (take a look at the pictures http://gallery.me.com/anniedg#100459), everything was beautifully organized, everyone knew their job.

Thank you volunteers – all of you!

And if you’re ready to volunteer, at the clinic, we have Tuesday and Thursday nights open. Let Rachel know:RachelS@aplacetobehealthy.org.

See you soon at the clinic!

Thanks Everyone!

Annie

View the newsletter PDF: Clinica-Esperanza-News-July-2010

R.N. Coordinator. Our current coordinator, Gloria Rose, has been an amazing help getting us up and runnig. She will continue to coordinate but we are actively searching for a bilingual RN from the Olneyville or Washtington Park location who will take over from Gloria as we are now getting too busy for the limited number of hourse she has available.

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We are still “all volunteer” with the exception of our Nurse Coordinator (the wonderful Gloria Rose) We have two to three MDs, an RN, an RNP (Derek), two translators, and two wonderful premed organizers (Rachel and Toby). Lisbeth Moscadello Sutter helps coordinate the clinic when the session is running and supervises the translators. Now that we are running regular clinics, we will be recruiting additional medical volunteers.

We are serving a predominantly Latino, very poor, Providence-based population. Based on data collected so far, our patients are Spanish speaking/ Latino (about 50%, compared to less than 10% in Rhode Island), overwhelmingly poor (81% make less than $15,000 per year) and from Providence.

We’ve been on Spanish language radio (Radio RinacerRI) twice! We will also soon be in the “Street Sheet” as a listed service. We are mainly using postering and word of mouth as a means of referral. This appears to be working, as we had more than 30 people at our last two flu clinics.

We have served more than 350 since June. Over the last few weeks, we have had a really busy period (seeing patients is making us too busy to be counting them). I have attached a few figures to this email that will give you the demographics, they are NOT final. In addition to doing basic primary care, we’re doing prevention ! We have given out more than half of our flu shots provided to our clinic, for free!

Clinica Esperanza is temporarily operating on Tuesday nights at ACOS (557 Broad Street). We do outreach (blood pressures, glucose and cholesterol checks) at Open Table of Christ, 1520 Broad, on Tuesdays (Carlos and Dr. Wing). We also do outreach at Iglesia Esperanza (5 Valley Street) in Olneyville on Saturday mornings (8 to 11).

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After some hard work – considering many different options, our Board of Directors finally selected 60 Valley Street as the best location for the clinic, and we won BOD approval to sign the lease and begin the build at 60 Valley Street on December 15th 2009! Building will start in January 2010 . . . We meet with architect from Urban Design in early January – if all goes well we’ll be in on March 1st 2010!

Our abstract was accepted to the conference called “Patient Navigation: An Emerging Role for Community Health Workers”, scheduled for May 6, 2010. For more conference details see www.patientnavigatormass.org.

“Vida Sana” Navegantes Program: Outreach to Improve Health Care Access for the Spanish-Speaking Providence, Rhode Island Community
Vinnie Velazquez, Carlos Juarez, Luz Betancur, Santos Zacharias, Elaine Waite, Jennifer Jiminez, Gloria Rose R.N., Anne S. De Groot M.D.

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