UW School of Medicine and Public Health: New student-run clinic offers pro bono care to underserved children

Contact: Ian Clark

(608) 890-5641

iclark@uwhealth.org

MADISON, Wis. — The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s MEDiC program is establishing another pro bono clinic in Madison, and it’s specifically for a group of Madison’s most vulnerable population: children.

MEDiC, a UW School of Medicine and Public Health (SMPH) organization which already operates multiple student-run clinics, provides health care to underserved members of the Madison community, while providing supervised educational experiences for UW students in health professions programs.

The new pediatric clinic is a partnership with the Center for Families (CFF) on Fordem Avenue. CFF, a nonprofit organization, provides a comprehensive array of social services dedicated to addressing the needs of families. Nearly 85 percent of children served at the CFF are from households at or below 100 percent of the federal poverty line.

The monthly clinic, which opens on June 17, will be staffed by UW students from the medicine, nursing, pharmacy, physical therapy and physician assistant programs, as well as social workers from the CFF and UW medical faculty.

“The collaboration with MEDiC fits well with our strategic plan to create alliances which benefit our center’s families, a large number of whom are the community’s most vulnerable citizens,” said Meg Miller, interim executive director of CFF. “Because our programs are easily accessible to parents and unduplicated in Dane County, we set eyes on children not regularly seen elsewhere. Our respite/crisis child care is available on site to help parents get breaks and daily tasks done.”

The medical director of the clinic, Dr. Dipesh Navsaria, is a pediatrician at American Family Children’s Hospital in Madison. Navsaria will provide broad clinical oversight at the clinic as well as supervise the clinic directly along with other volunteer faculty. While students “do a lot of the work in logistics to make the clinic happen, recruiting student volunteers, coordinating with Center for Families, they’re still in training. This is an opportunity for them to participate and to learn from the experienced clinical faculty as they provide care together to the children to come to this clinic.”

Navsaria approached the CFF roughly a year ago in an effort to place pediatric residents at the Center for brief educational experiences. During discussions, staff members were able to show how many of their client-families aren’t connected to a regular primary care medical home—a team-based health care model that provides comprehensive and continuous care to patients. Seeing that need, Navsaria suggested the MEDiC program as a bridge to help establish primary care homes for CFF clients.

“We’re trying to provide initial services around whatever pressing concern there may be, but our goal is to also connect these families with a primary care medical home so that these children can get all the care they need, which we can’t possibly provide with a once-monthly clinic,” he said.

Something else unique about this clinic is the intake process; students will also conduct a psychosocial assessment of the family and child. Unlike the common medical history detailing medications, allergies and the like, this assessment identifies social stressors that are all too common for children living in a certain amount of adversity, according to Navsaria. Looking at things like food and housing insecurity, exposure to violence and other stressors is a new effort to identify what broader issues are posing long-term threats to a child’s health and well-being.

While the psychosocial stressors are not often screened for in most practices, the clinic plans to not only identify stressors but also provide the results (with permission) to the medical homes they are referring these CFF families to.

“This is really where a lot of the work nationally is starting to go among those working with children and families living in poverty, recognizing these psychosocial stressors,” said Navsaria. “Right now in the health care system nationally, we’re doing a really poor job at asking these questions even though the data is extraordinarily clear about the long-term outcomes. The good news here is that by showing our health professions students how to ask these questions and how common these conditions are, then they—we hope—are more likely to think about these things as they continue their training and begin their careers.”

MEDiC student-run clinics have served Madison for almost 25 years and provide more than 1,700 patient visits per year, free to patients. Clinics are funded primarily by private donations and grants, and the average cost per patient visit is $11.79.

Existing MEDiC clinics include:

-Grace Clinic at the Porchlight Men’s Shelter at Grace Episcopal Church on the Capitol Square

-Salvation Army Clinic at the Salvation Army Family and Women’s Shelter on East Washington Avenue

-South Side Clinic at the Access Community Health Center Harambee Clinic

-Safe Haven Mental Health Clinic at Porchlight’s Safe Haven facility on Nakoosa Trail

-Michele Tracy Preventative Health Clinic at Porchlight’s North Brooks Street facility

-Madison Dental Initiative Clinic, specifically designed to help meet the oral health needs of those residing at the Salvation Army Family and Women’s Shelter.

The South Side Clinic is the only clinic currently available to the general public.