The City of Franklin and Southampton County have partnered with Old Dominion University to launch a mobile health care clinic that will serve people who, otherwise, would have to travel great lengths to see a doctor. The clinic officially opened on Wednesday at S.P. Morton Elementary School in Franklin, providing free medical care to children.
"This is a big deal and I'm very grateful for the opportunity of it being here," said S.P. Morton Elementary School parent Shatonya Pope alongside her 5-year-old son, Bryson. "If [Bryson] has a 1 o'clock appointment in Chesapeake I have to take a half day off work...and you have to take the appointments they give you."
S.P. Morton Elementary School Principal, Dr. Jennifer Tindle, says they will utilize the clinic to get kids medically ready for school.
"We're focusing primarily on physicals and immunizations," she said.
These are two types of appointments Pope says she and her fellow Franklin parents struggle to get.
"Some children can't even start school because they can't get an appointment until after school is open," said Pope. "So the parents are frustrated."
Throughout the next four years, the clinic plans to provide free health care at least three days a week. It will be staffed by a family nurse practitioner, a pediatric nurse practitioner, psychiatric-mental health nurse practitioner providers, and Old Dominion University nursing students.
The goal of the clinic is to meet residents where they are and combat rural health disparities by eliminating the boundaries to quality health care.
"Some people can't drive and get to where they need to go, out of town, 45 minutes to an hour away," said Franklin's Mayor, Bobby Cutchins. "So we're really excited to partner with Old Dominion University on this."
Carolyn Rutledge, the associate chair of Old Dominion University's School of Nursing, says the clinic aims to provide care to 20 patients a day.
"You're looking at 60 patients over the three-day period," she said. "And that's not including the ones that we might be monitoring through telehealth."
While the mobile health clinic may look like an RV (because it is), when expanded, it includes two full patient rooms and a waiting area.
"You can do anything in here you could do in a normal doctor's office," said Rutledge. "You think of Virginia, and you think of all the rural areas, [so you assume] we've got to have great health care here. No, we don't."
The beds in both patient rooms come equipped with stirrups, which Rutledge says was done purposefully to provide rural women with additional health care options.
According to the Virginia Department of Health, parts of both Franklin and Southampton County are considered maternity care deserts. This means it takes women, on average, 47 minutes to see an OB-GYN.
When you combine a 47-minute drive time with the length of the actual appointment, Rutledge says most women, especially those living in low-income areas, don't have three hours to spend seeing the gynecologist. This means, unfortunately, for many rural women, their health care often falls on the back burner.
In addition to pediatric care and gynecology, the mobile clinic will also offer specialty pop-ups that will include physical therapy, optometry, and mental health services.
"We ranked 47th in the nation for mental health for adults," said Rutledge.
According to VDH, the median drive time to the closest mental health services for a Franklin resident is about 41 minutes. For Southampton residents, the median drive time is a bit greater, at 47 minutes.
Amanda Hudgins, the mobile clinic's lead nurse practitioner, says this, unfortunately, means mental health care often gets pushed aside, but can then manifest in other health issues.
"There are a lot of parallels in the obesity rate and the lack of care for mental health," she explained.
Meanwhile, Principal Tindle says she's also seen an increase in elementary school students' need for mental health care and is grateful that the clinic can provide these services.
"We've seen a shift even at the elementary level," she said. "And anybody who's tried to get a mental health appointment knows it's difficult because a lot of people need that now and we have limited providers."
Run by nurse practitioners and nursing students, the mobile clinic also aims to inspire students to serve in areas where health care access is limited.
"This academic program is committed to placing our students in underserved populations so they'll stay there," said Hudgins. "Then they can be empowered to be part of that society and they can contribute back to the whole."
According to the latest data from the Rural Health Information Hub, nurses are in high demand in Virginia's rural areas. This is especially true for Southampton County, which shows there are less than three nurse practitioners per every 10,000 Southampton residents.
"We are planning to bring increased access to healthcare for this population who are desperately in need," added Hudgins.
The mobile health care clinic comes with a price tag of $360,000, which is part of a $4 million grant Rutledge received to fund the service.
Rutledge says they plan to spread the word by parking outside of schools and sending flyers home with kids to let their parents know when the mobile clinic will be in their community.
"We can serve in parking lots," she explained. "In Walmarts, we can go to trailer parks, we can go to the school."
The van also has a large QR code printed on its side. Residents can scan the code and see a schedule of the clinic's upcoming travel plans and specialized clinics.
You can also view the mobile health care clinic's upcoming schedule here.
