LAUREN JOHNSON
On Tuesday, the City of Opelika unveiled the Neighborhood Mobile Wellness Clinic, a bus meant to offer free medical services to the underserved in the community.
The mobile clinic will be operational by late November or early December and will provide routine and chronic illness screenings, promote disease prevention and provide referrals to community resources.
Services will be provided by East Alabama Health personnel, with help from students in healthcare majors at local colleges and universities. There will be about three personnel seeing patients inside the bus and about six personnel working outside the bus to manage the crowd and handle logistics.
It will be a walk-in clinic only. Patients will not need to make an appointment.
Once the bus hits the streets in Opelika, it’s scheduled to visit the Jeter Community on Tuesdays and the Carver Community on Fridays.
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The push to establish a local mobile clinic came from Jocelyn Zanzot and her husband Daniel Neil, of Auburn. They saw the positive impact of a mobile clinic in Florida and decided to start working with the local community leaders to set one up here.
Zanzot said this clinic will reach people who don’t have access to transportation as well as provide a private space to see a physician who can also connect patients to other services they may need.
The interior design of the bus was created in partnership with some of the leaders in the School of Nursing at Auburn, and Zanzot said they thought through what was needed, especially when it comes to privacy.
“This is amazing! It’s really exciting to see. It’s a great collaborative effort,” she said.
Opelika Mayor Gary Fuller said this project has been in the works since 2018.
First Transit, a transportation company headquartered in Ohio, donated a bus that was remodeled to operate as a mobile clinic.
Opelika City Administrator Joey Motley said the bus has received numerous modifications. The roof was raised, new air units were added and medical equipment was installed.
Motley said they looked at the University of Florida Mobile Outreach Clinic in Gainesville, Fla., and followed the model of their successful program.
After years of waiting and fundraising, Fuller said he’s happy to see it go on the road and see the positive outcome it will bring to the community.
“We’re going to change lives,” he said. “This makes just another significant and great day in the life of our community. We could not have done this without the strong partnership with East Alabama Health.”
Laura Grill, EAH President and CEO, said the partnership between the Casey Family Foundation, an organization that focuses on reducing the need for foster care; the City of Opelika; and EAH began with the mission to figure out how to meet the health care needs of members in underserved areas of the community.
“The whole purpose was how we can connect more people to care, give them access to care, and that was really our foundational mission,” Grill said.
Matthew McClammey, director of Opelika Housing Authority, said he is very supportive of this endeavor and so is the Opelika Housing Authority, which plans to work with the city and EAMC to support the mobile clinic.
“We have a lot of seniors that don’t have transportation,” McClammey said. “This bus being able to go to them will help them a lot, and we have a lot of disabled families that don’t have the opportunity to go to the hospital.”
Sutricia Johnson, EAH director of case management, grew up in the Carver Community of Opelika and believes it’s her obligation to give back to the community that helped shape her.
Johnson said it’s going to “take a village” to make the vision for the mobile clinic come to life and to keep it going.
Through this clinic, Johnson said health care workers will be able to meet members of the community where they are and be able to identify disease or illness that would otherwise go undetected.
“We’re going to start small and the Lord only knows where it will go… We’re excited to see what’s gonna come of this. We’re excited to go work in our community,” she said.
The hours of operation will be from 9 am to 1 pm, and Johnson said the schedule for the bus, including time and location, will soon be available on the EAMC website and the City of Opelika website.
Johnson said the mobile clinic will be working with the Opelika Housing Authority to determine where the best point of care would be that will be easily accessible for the members of the Jeter and Carver communities.
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