Most health-related news these days is bad — courtesy of COVID-19 — but a rare positive development has occurred with a $40,000 grant being awarded to a local organization that provides free medical care.
Ironically, it’s because of the pandemic that Surry Medical Ministries was tapped for that funding by the North Carolina Community Foundation. The foundation was established in 1988 to support a broad range of community needs, non-profit organizations, institutions and scholarships, providing more than $184 million in grants along the way.
The $40,000 awarded to the Surry Medical Ministries based on Rockford Street — a non-profit clinic that began offering free services to persons with inadequate access to medical care in 1993 — coincides with a new fund launched by the state foundation.
Its North Carolina Healing Communities Fund emerged due to foundation officials recognizing the need for a program focused solely on meeting the needs of non-profits impacted by COVID-19, according to Tyran Hill, program officer for the North Carolina Community Foundation.
The new fund’s focus is on marginalized communities disproportionately affected by the virus and its economic impacts which have been underserved by other sources of financial assistance – specifically, mostly rural communities of lower wealth, Hill added Thursday. It seeks to assist those severely impacted through revenue losses or increased demand due to the pandemic.
A need to address such effects locally was echoed Thursday by Nancy Dixon, president of the Surry Medical Ministries’ board of directors, in reacting to the grant award.
“Actually, we are thrilled, because we have not really gotten any state, federal or really many local funds during the pandemic and this is a lifeline for us,” Dixon said, noting that only about 24 entities in the state have been selected for grants.
Hill, the North Carolina Community Foundation spokesman, pointed out that Surry Medical Ministries is considered a “high-quality” grantee, which exemplifies who the foundation would like to see apply for aid through the North Carolina Healing Communities Fund.
“Our numbers have doubled,” Dixon said of the kind of demands posed by the pandemic which the state foundation is trying to address.
“We had about 3,700 office visits in 2020,” she said, with more people served last year than during 2019. “And we were closed for several weeks due to the government shutdown.”
The clinic, which is open only six hours per week on two days, added almost 80 new patients in November and December.
Pandemic effects
COVID-19 has affected the Surry Medical Ministries operation in multiple ways, Dixon detailed.
This included having to undertake changes in order to make the clinic building safer, which served to reduce the crowds typically seen outside the facility on days when it operates.
“This is hopefully going to allow us to make even more changes,” Dixon said of the $40,000 grant and how it will aid plans for the inside of the building to provide more privacy and spacing.
The money also will help supply prescription medications for clinic patients which are in demand, including those related to COVID-19 needed by persons with lingering problems after battling the virus.
To illustrate the financial demands that have faced Surry Medical Ministries in the past year, Dixon mentioned that its temporary shutdown was prompted by a requirement for personnel at primary-care facilities to wear hazardous-materials-type clothing.
“And we didn’t have that,” Dixon said. The local clinic also could not afford face masks, which was alleviated by a donation of those coverings by a young man in town, Bill Rierson.
Before the state foundation grant was awarded, Dixon said the monetary assistance garnered by the clinic relative to the pandemic was limited to funds received to allow its patients to order and fill prescriptions remotely.
After the shutdown, the clinic gradually began adding appointments and now the demand is such that people are having to be put off for possibly a couple of weeks to get appointments.
Since Surry Medical Ministries depends on volunteers to provide its services, those ranks also have been depleted during the pandemic, Dixon said, as many were older folks with the highest risk of infection.
Only about 12 lay volunteers are now involved, along with a core group of some 12 to 15 physicians who serve at the clinic on a rotating basis, six to eight nurses who rotate, around eight pharmacists who do the same and about five dentists, among others.
But the $40,000, similar to the COVID-19 vaccine itself, is providing a welcome shot in the arm to everyone concerned, Dixon indicated.
“I couldn’t have been more proud,” she said of the grant award, “because our organization deserves this recognition.”
Source: https://www.mtairynews.com
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