To potential benefactors of Community Health Free Clinic,
On March 23rd, President Obama signed historic healthcare reform legislation. What this legislation means for many of the 47 million uninsured in our country remains to be seen. We know that it will be at least four or more years before many of our patients experience any benefit.
While the new historic healthcare reform legislation is being defined we can not get distracted and forget the patients needing us today. Unlike many free clinics throughout the United States, Community Health Free Clinic is a strong volunteer based organization so we are able to provide $12 of patient services for every dollar spent. Your support is needed more than ever before as we provided over 55,000 patient services in FY 2010.
In January of this year we had a young family come to the Clinic. The husband had been hospitalized with dental infection that required in-patient surgery. He had no money for the two medications he needed and could not get public assistance because he did not have a birth certificate and did not know how to go about obtaining it. One of our staff worked with this individual and arranged for CHFC to pay for a copy of his birth certificate. (If he had this earlier, he would have been eligible to receive his care for free.) On top of his health issues, they (Dad, Mom and two small children) had walked here on a very cold day. The baby was crying and when I asked if she didn’t have a bottle, the mother informed me that they did not have any milk. We were able to find formula in our supply room and then paid for a cab ride to get this family back home. As co-founder, Dr. William B. Galbraith, has stated, “We don’t just treat the pain, we treat the people.”
The need for free healthcare continues to increase in our community and I am asking for your help. Please consider a gift to Community Health Free Clinic today. Your investment impacts not only a patient’s health needs, but the quality of their life, the lives of their families and our community.
For more information about how you can make a difference, please contact Darlene by phone at
319-363-0416 or by email. You can also make an immediate online donation to Community Health Free Clinic by clicking on the “donate now” button to your left. We could not make the difference we do without our generous donors.
In Friendship,
Darlene Schmidt Lissa Novitch
Chief Executive Officer and Clinic Executive Director Director of Development
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Mission: To provide Medical and Dental care to the uninsured and under-served
of East Central Iowa through model Community Partnerships.
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