morning show it's time for
giving back promise health
care has opportunities to
volunteer and a health care
organization providing primary
care dental dental and
behavioral health today we're
hearing from manager of
marketing volunteers for Shea
Ward o'shea can you tell us
why people should be involved
with your project.
Yes, Sir and thank you for
having us as you mentioned
down probably promised health
care provide affordable
accessible primary. Health
care behavioral health and
dental care Champaign County.
As a federally qualified
health Center we provide
services to people with
insurance. We have a sliding
fee scale and also folks that
may not have any coverage not
able to pay. So it play a role
in the community. Voluntary a
promise gives you the
opportunity for several things
one to really get some insight
into the health care
community. And you know you
can first and disparities in
access and how are we we're
working to address those and
then volunteer also
volunteered also has actually
shown to help. With with
health so that's something we
all need now social
interactions help with
depression. So you know now
that we're kind of moving post
covid hopefully. People can
start to seek out some
volunteer opportunities. And
we have coming available.
And in your experience can
you explain to us what kind of
feeling it is to be able to
provide this type of
volunteering for people in
need right now it's going to
be a good feeling I would
think.
It's been wonderful, you
know one of our programs food
is medicine that we know we're
still a food bank on site. We
provide food bags for for for
folks that are over patients
that identified as feud and
secure and we had to get rid
of the food bank so one of our
volant are volunteers on but
by Debbie Hensley and other
folks in the community
actually started delivering
food to the folks about a 100
families in the community.
There are patients as well so
just being able to prove see
that linkage of finding a need
to be able to fill it has been
very fulfilling on during some
of these dark times of covid
and trying to find a way to
continue services has been
amazing.
Shea tell me about your
volunteers who can get
involved with this who are you
looking for.
Sure well right now our big
push for U of I we've got a
lot of a longstanding
relationship with University
of During health program and
other programs. So right now
are summer internship program.
You can find those
opportunities on we've posted
it to join handshake com which
should know about you can
apply there. Mainly for
community health, but also
those folks start for those
into going to medical school
nursing school we have
hands-on clinical rolls to
dental.
Programs. So you can e-mail
him going to join handshake
dot com if you're U of I
student. Otherwise we have a
volunteer e-mail volunteer at
promise health dot org. And
also we'll be posting some to
our facebook page which is at
And chance about that time
of year where people are going
to getting involved but their
internships can you tell me
about that you have any
programs coming up war.
Students can get involved.
Yes, so we have a we have a
pretty robust an intern
program and we're actually
been one of the few that have
been able to try to maintain
some on site during this
especially for the clinical
roles. Some of the community
health folks need about 320
hours on site work so we
provide some of those and
administrative areas they can
learn about if you want to to
health administration, some
administration issues human
resources. Things like that if
you're clinical, you know your
hands on with with patients, a
direct patient care. And so.
We've got a structure
restructuring the internships
around what is of interest and
also to be an educational
opportunity. We've also worked
with the school they have some
projects they're working on
that if they can't make the
hours here because of covid or
quarantine we've been
cooperating with them on how
we we bridge that gap so it's
really a wide variety of
there's a there's a listing of
internships on the website but
I would encourage anyone
that's interested in general
internship or volunteer to go
ahead and. And e-mail us and
check this out and we can try
to design something we're very
open to trying to create
really. Rewarding and
educational experiences.
from interns and volunteers
after they've completed these
programs. It's been great we
actually have several that we
hire especially on the
clinical side. We've had
several that have become
employees which is always a
good sign. And it's always
been positive feedback on the
eggs or did they enjoy the
experience they enjoyed how
because we're kind of smaller
clinic also you really get
involved in the day-to-day
operations and really get to
how a community health clinic
really operate so that they've
reported they've enjoyed
seeing that really hands on
whether or not. You know.
Weather is really part of the
organization not just and in
turn they're really part of a
vital part of our organization
what we do. All right Shay
thank you so much for your
time we appreciate you this
Monday. Thank you for the
opportunity. Thank you that's
very weak. We'll have more of
your morning show coming up