CHP On the Road: The Essence of Community Health

Aug 9, 2021 | News

CHP has been a rolling health care operation since 1975. We haven’t run out of gas yet.

Kathleen Floyd and Michelle Derr

Family Nurse Practitioner Kathleen Floyd and Senior VP of Family Services Michelle Derr

By Kathleen Floyd, FNP

If our community had been faced with a Covid-19 crisis in the 1970s, local community health leaders would have been the first to mobilize. They would have asked: Who needs our help? Where do we find them? Who’s driving?

Fast planning and action would have followed for Children’s Health Program in Great Barrington—the seedling for what is now Community Health Programs. The outreach team would have been working out of a station wagon owned by Dr. Thomas Whitfield, CHP’s visionary founder. They would have been crisscrossing the county without the benefit of today’s technology.

I have been providing primary care as a family nurse practitioner in the Berkshires since the mid-1990s. I found my true health care home in 2011 when I joined CHP and helped to expand their mobile health operation. Since then, I’ve been honored to play a part in forwarding the founding spirit of CHP’s originators. They believed health care should hit the road.

Today, CHP has a sophisticated mobile health unit, courtesy of Berkshire-Fallon Health Collaborative, our regional MassHealth partner. This big orange bus, which we call “BOB,” has logged nearly 5,000 miles since January 2021. The van team has delivered 4,000 Covid-19 vaccines as of Aug. 3.

Before Covid-19, our van offered services like walk-up health screenings and appointments, insurance and WIC information and food support. For years, we used our own rusted and creaking CHP van, but now we have BOB. In 2022, we will add another van to our fleet – yes, we are that busy.

MHU Team

CHP’s Mobile Health Unit Team

You can’t miss us: BOB visits gas stations, supermarkets, group homes and homeless shelters, residences for women escaping domestic violence, summer camps, baseball games, fire stations, outdoor concerts. BOB makes house calls, too, and we will pull over anywhere else that seems promising. We talk with lots and lots of people. So many have been desperate for vaccines, but issues with work, childcare, transportation, internet posed hard barriers.

When we meet vaccine skeptics, we offer the best medical information we can, and we hope to change minds. We work to counter myths and misunderstandings. Sometimes it works.

BOB is our most visible symbol of community health at work. Less visible is the compassionate and inclusive health care happening in exam rooms and telehealth calls, in dental chairs, and at mental health counseling appointments in our practice sites around the Berkshires.

Our insurance enrollment team is as dogged as our mobile health team in making sure people get access to health insurance. The family support, problem-solving and food security work of our Family Services team is nothing short of heroic.

This work is replicated in 1,400 health centers around the U.S. by health care professionals who believe health care should be accessible to, and excellent for, everyone. All of these health centers are celebrating National Health Centers Week, Aug. 9-14.

FNP Kathleen Floyd and Senior VP of Family Services Michelle Derr

We think mobile health care outreach is a key reason to celebrate—especially now. Mobile health care is not uncomplicated or easy – but it is truly rewarding.

When we meet patients where they are, we are on their turf. We are guests in their home, or their community. We are a partner in their health. We are on a level playing field together.

Shouldn’t health care access and care always be this way?

Kathleen Floyd is a family nurse practitioner with Community Health Programs.

 

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