b y JAC K S H E R Z E R
Putting on a Clinic Nearly one-third of Americans are uninsured or underinsured. In Columbia County, the Volunteers in Medicine Clinic is meeting the needs of more than 1,500 patients who otherwise could not afford medical care. LORI REESE CAN’T FORGET the man who came into the Columbia County Volunteers in Medicine Clinic looking for a way to help control his adult son’s high blood pressure. The man’s wife had died and he was the sole caretaker for his mentally disabled son. He was struggling financially, and it soon became clear that he wasn’t able to afford his son’s blood pressure medication or his own. “They were trying to decide what they could do on very little income. They actually asked me, ‘What medication do I absolutely have to take and what can I let go?’ Even the ones he needed, he was taking every other day to stretch them out. Sometimes they would go a week without medicine until they could afford to have it refilled,” says Reese, who graduated from Bloomsburg University in December 2011 with a degree in nursing. Reese did a shift at the clinic as part of a class in public health nursing. “I knew there were these problems,” says Reese of Millville. “But I never had anyone say they were forced to skip medications for financial reasons until I was in the clinic, and it really struck home.” Since opening its doors in early 2007, the Columbia County Volunteers in Medicine Clinic has provided the only option for ongoing health care assistance for many of the area’s uninsured and underinsured. The Mifflinville-based clinic was founded by Bette Anderson Grey ’81, who experienced firsthand the possibility of not having insurance to help with a serious illness. The setting also provides a unique educational opportunity for Bloomsburg University’s nursing students, who can choose to spend at least one shift in the clinic as part of their studies.
SPRING 2012
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