Samuel U. Rodgers Health Center: URBAN HEALTH RELIEF PROGRAM
Posted on Thursday, May 27th, 2010 at 2:17 pm
Samuel U Rodgers Health Center is proud to announce a unique implementation for our grant funding called the URBAN HEALTH RELIEF program. The grant is a PRIMO (Primary Care Resources Initiative for Missouri). It was secured on our behalf by the Missouri Primary Care Association, who actually wrote it and lobbied for the funds to support it. The Samuel U. Rodgers Health Center has the job of receiving the funds and to carry out the planning and implementation and to do so in the most effective way for the community that we serve.
This grant will provide free health services in the areas of family medicine, adult medicine, pediatrics and women’s health including clinical breast exams and digital mammograms. Patients will be able to come back to SURHC for follow-up treatment, if needed.
The grant targets African Americans of all ages – babies, children, young adults, families and seniors. Persons who receive services must qualify under federal poverty guidelines. For example, a family of four which makes under $22,050 a year would be eligible. When people call in or come into the Center, we will qualify them on site. If they aren’t eligible for this particular program, we may have other programs available to them.
We are making a special effort to reach out to young adults and young African American men. Studies show that men, especially this group, don’t seek out regular health care after the age of 11 or 12. We are stepping out of the box with some new approaches which include using several spokespersons who have open lines of communication with this audience.
To help us better reach our community, we are opening up on Saturdays for a limited time, and we will host several special events. We have several doctors and nurse practitioners who have offered to work extra hours to make sure this program is successful. Events include a kickoff April 24th with our Family Health Day. For the Mother’s Day weekend on Saturday, May 8th, we will be emphasizing women’s health and on Saturday, June 19th, around Father’s Day, we will have events that highlight men’s health issues.
One of the more exciting new initiatives we are implementing is a cell phone text option along with other social media networking such as Face book and Twitter. The Samuel U. Rodgers Health Center wants to build an expanded client base and we know we have to reach out to them in the way in which they communicate. Our text info is: S-A-M-U to 32075.
Our Urban Health Relief program will provide free transportation to persons who live within an 8-mile radius of our Center. We have established a special hotline number for persons to call and set up appointments and to get picked up if needed. Our hotline number is 816 889-4670.
