Pop-up Healthcare Clinic in Willimantic, Connecticut

Spring 2024 UConn Co-op Legacy Fellowship – Change Grant Project

Project Mentor: Miguel Colon, Community Outreach

Project Summary

In collaboration with Remote Area Medical, UConn Community Outreach, and the Medical Clinic Club, we hosted the first pop-up clinic in Connecticut with Remote Area Medical (RAM). The clinic’s goal was to provide free medical, dental, and vision care to as many people as possible in the area. Myself and three other UConn students took on the role of Community Host Group (CHG) in which we were responsible for advertising the clinic to the community, recruiting all of the volunteers, and funding the clinic in full. The first step to hosting a clinic was meeting with RAM in March 2023 to see if we were able to host a clinic and understand the requirements to host a clinic. After getting the green light from RAM we went to see a clinic firsthand at Penns Valley Elementary Intermediate School in Spring Mills, PA, and were able to meet with the CHG from Penn State to learn what they did.

The biggest step to hosting a clinic is securing a location. Over the summer of 2023, the superintendent of Windham Public Schools generously donated Windham Middle School and janitorial staff for the entire clinic. During the 2023-2024 academic year, we worked to recruit all of the healthcare and general support volunteers, secure funding from a variety of sources such as the Change Grant, and most importantly advertising the event to the community. In addition, we coordinated volunteer transportation, meals and lodging as well as recruiting nonprofits for the resource hallway, arranging a biohazard pick up, managing parking lot logistics, table and chair rentals, and notifying public safety officials of the event. Throughout this entire process, we had regular meetings with our RAM Clinic Coordinator and Volunteer Coordinator to make sure we were on track to host the clinic on March 1st, 2nd, and 3rd.

Impact

At the clinic, we were able to provide $122,826.00 worth of free medical, dental, and vision care to 212 patients.

On March 1st, we had roughly 100 general support volunteers come to help transform the middle school into the clinic. For the medical clinic, volunteers turned a large classroom into a medical office that could see five patients at a time. The vision clinic consisted of three classrooms: one for initial imagining, the second for optometrists to conduct full visual exams and the last classroom was where patients were able to select their glasses frames to hold their custom-made lenses if glasses were indicated. Lastly, the dental clinic was set up in the main gym in which twenty tents were connected to filters to make sure each area was sterile. In the dental clinic, there was an initial triage section, imaging area, and equipment cleaning station.

Once the entire clinic was set up, with the help of over 200 volunteers each day we were able to open doors to the community on March 2nd and 3rd. During the clinic patients were triaged by nursing students from Central Connecticut State University, met with medical providers from all over the Northeast, and were treated by students from UConn School of Dental Medicine.

We truly could not have pulled this event off without the support from the Willimantic community and all of the help from the plethora of partnering organizations.

What’s Next

After hosting this first clinic and being able to see the impact that it had on the community, we hope to keep this as an annual event. At the moment we are working to establish the Medical Clinic Club as a registered 501c3 organization so that we can directly manage clinic funds. The Medical Clinic Club will host a debrief meeting with club members who volunteered at the event to get their input on what they thought went well and what they would change. If RAM and the Willimantic community allow us, we will begin planning another clinic for March 2025 and cannot wait to see how we can grow this project for the future.

About Brooke

Brooke is a junior majoring in Physiology & Neurobiology with a minor in Psychological Sciences. On campus, she is involved with the Pre-Medical Society, Community Outreach, and is a part of the Bahal Lab in the School of Pharmacy. Outside of academics, Brooke enjoys running and spending time with her family and friends.