90% of Georgia’s counties are considered healthcare deserts, including Athens-Clarke. In these areas, health needs go unmet because of a lack of access to healthcare providers and facilities. A local healthcare symposium gathered nonprofits together last weekend to discuss improving healthcare access, both now and in the long run.
Dr. Loretta Duggan of HER Health in Athens highlighted the issue of unequal access to healthcare in most Georgia counties during a panel discussion she moderated Saturday. The panel featured five Athens- and Atlanta-based organizations that offer free or affordable healthcare and was organized by the Human Relations Commission of the Athens-Clarke County government. Presenters sought to educate the community about their services. But they also wanted to discuss how they deliver those services so that healthcare can be a reality for all.
Common Ground
The panel featured both a Christian ministry organization from Athens as well as Georgia’s only independent abortion clinic in Atlanta. The two organizations quickly found common ground when discussing the individuals they serve.
Dr. Cole Phillips is the medical director and CEO of Mercy Health Center, a Christian ministry in Athens that provides bilingual medical and dental care for uninsured people. He said that many of the people he treats come from low-income immigrant backgrounds.
“At Mercy, most of the folks we see being forgotten are based around income, or housing, or some other factor that’s not related to medicine. I’d say especially people that don’t speak English as their first language,”
Kristen Baker, an abortion lobbyist from the Feminist Center for Reproductive Liberation in Atlanta, agreed.
“Specifically at our clinic, I would say we’re seeing a lot of undocumented immigrants being pushed out of care,”
Her organization offers reproductive healthcare and postpartum care in addition to abortions.
Dr. Phillips and Baker also said their organizations’ patients tend to be people who live in rural areas and have to travel long distances for care. Baker added that Black women and LGBTQIA+ people are more likely to be unable to access reproductive healthcare than other groups.
Beyond awareness, trust
The presenters highlighted that they wanted to not only present the services they offer, but also the steps they take to improve trust with the communities they serve. Sarah Peck works at the Clarke County Health Department in the Teen Matters Program. She says that her organization tries to be consistent in the delivery of its services.
“Trust is a function of consistent action over time. It’s based on relationships you have. The cornerstone of that is respect and making sure that your patients and the folks in the community feel respected and feel heard,”
Teen Matters offers HIV prevention and sexual and reproductive health services to adolescents. Peck says the organization sends outreach staff to schools to build relationships with students.
Dr. Suzanne Lester is the director of the Athens Free Clinic, run by the Augusta University-University of Georgia Medical Partnership. The organization offers primary care, screening, and disease prevention services. She agreed that the individual patients should be at the center of care.
“Our approach is that we want to keep showing up. Show up how the patients in the community want you to show up, not how you necessarily want to show up, but being able to listen very well and find out what is it that they need from you, and you can’t know that without asking,”
She said she tells the medical students who work in the clinic to view patients as teachers in control of their own healthcare decisions.
Preparing for more need
Most of the organizations at Saturday’s event said they were closely watching changes to public health insurance programs at the federal level, as well as rules around grant funding. Presenters said that while they hadn’t seen any changes to their programs yet, they’re preparing for more Georgians to lose health insurance thanks to rising costs of living and regulation changes for Medicare and Medicaid.
According to Dr. Phillips, medical director at Mercy Health Center,
“Mercy only sees uninsured patients, so for us it’s not going to change who we see, it’s just going to change the volume.”
Some estimates suggest that Georgians will see health insurance costs increase by over 20% next year on the Affordable Care Act marketplace. Because of this, Dr. Phillips and others are preparing for a surge in demand.
He said he is seeking more funding to employ a larger staff of providers. But he’ll likely have to repeat what he calls “creative” methods to serve patients.
“I did a new patient clinic with medical students two days ago, all we saw was new patients. And that was awesome. We’re trying to be creative in solving that gap, but ultimately it comes down to providers and staff and how we can get folks seen,”
As they try to raise funds to increase their operation, the providers also said they refer patients to one another in a tightly linked network.
A new era of collaboration
Northeast Georgians have long traveled to Athens-Clarke County for healthcare. Saturday’s symposium suggested that Athens’ nonprofit community may become an even more important hub of care for this part of the state.
Athens Wellness Clinic is another bilingual healthcare center offering free services to uninsured and low-income Georgians. Laura Driscoll is the organization’s Patient Assistance Coordinator. She attended the symposium and left inspired to increasing connections between nonprofits.
“We sort of get just buried in our work every day and don’t spend time with peers. We’ve got to work past that. It’s the only way we’ll be able to work smart, be as efficient as we can, optimize our clinical skills and resources to take care of everybody,” Driscoll said.
She says the panel was a valuable moment for providers to gather and share the common challenges they’ve been experiencing and recommit to collaboration. As uncertainty about healthcare increases for many Georgians, nonprofits in Athens-Clarke County appear united in the mission to serve the uninsured.
