December Community Partner: Good Neighbor Health Clinic and Red Logan Dental Clinic
added 10/23/09
The Good Neighbor Health Clinic and Red Logan Dental Clinic offer help and hope to those who desperately need it. The two clinics are also the December 2009 Co-op Community Partners of the Month.
Who They Are
One snowy December day, a Co-op employee rode on the Advance Transit bus line from his home in White River Junction, Vermont, to the Hanover Food Store. Along the way he struck up a conversation with a young woman riding on the bus with her four-year-old son. She told the employee she was taking her son to a relative’s house before starting her job for the day. After quitting time, she added, she would get back on the bus, pick up her son, take him to another relative’s home, and walk to the job she held at night.
This was her regular Monday-through-Friday routine, she explained without complaint. The challenge, she said, was her weekend routine—when she worked her third and fourth jobs and had to find transportation without bus service.
Welcome to the life of the working poor.
As the invisible, struggling-to-survive backbone of many communities, the working poor often hold more than one low-wage job, working 40 to 60 hours per week without health or dental insurance. But the Good Neighbor Health Clinic and Red Logan Dental Clinic offer help and hope. Both clinics are housed in downtown White River Junction and are staffed by volunteer physicians, dentists, nurses, medical students, and administrative staff.
In addition to medical and dental services, both clinics help match clients to other resources they may need. Since their inception more than 10 years ago, the clinics have assisted clients with housing issues, job placement, and clothing and transportation needs. The clinics also serve as a referral agency to neighboring food pantries.
How You Can Help:
Make a contribution when you shop at the Co-op Food Stores, Service Center, or Community Market during December.
Call to learn about volunteer opportunities. Good Neighbor Health Clinic: (802) 295-1868; Red Logan Dental Health Clinic: (802) 295-7573.
Learn more by visiting the website of the Vermont Coalition of Clinics for the Uninsured at www.vccu.net.
What Do You Think?
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