- I'm hanging out with Carnie Wilson.
Give it up! - Yeah.
- All right, today we are celebrating people
finally reuniting in person, after a long year apart.
Shortly before the pandemic,
our next guests opened the very first black-owned
urgent care facility in Chicago's South Side,
providing much needed access to affordable health care.
So not long after opening,
Coronavirus devastated their community.
So they stepped up in a very big way,
distributing masks, offering testing,
and getting the word out on how to be safe.
Now they're on a mission to vaccinate
as many people as possible.
They're what we like to call "Rad Humans".
(upbeat music)
So dialing in from Premier Urgent Care,
please say hi to Dr. Mike, Dr. Reuben and Dr. Airron.
Hello!
(clapping)
- [Carnie] Hi.
- Hello. - Hey Kelly, how you doin'?
- How you doin'? - Hey Kelly!
- First of all, gentlemen, you look sharp.
Secondly, meet Carnie.
- Hi!
- Hi - How you doin'?
- Nice to meet you.
- So Dr. Mike, I'll start with you.
How and why did this all get started?
- Well thank you, Kelly.
Premier Health Network was inspired by
the memory of my mother.
My mother at age 55, died from uterine cancer,
about three months after her diagnosis.
She was retired and was actually about to
start her own business when she did not have medical care.
And so as a result of that she ended up dying
because it was not detected early enough.
So in her memory I wanted to have something
that could be affordable for people
who don't have healthcare.
So as an ER doctor, I see patients that come in
who are black and brown, or who don't have access to care.
They spent all this money on an ER
and they have to wait three or four hours.
Well, I wanted to have something on the South Side
of Chicago that could give them the opportunity
to get accessible care.
So I partnered with these two gentlemen,
Dr. Rutland who's a surgeon and Dr. Richardson,
who is an ER doc.
We work at the same hospital at Methodist in Gary Indiana,
and we came up with Premier Health Network,
which includes an urgent care,
an occupational health center, as well as
primary care and integrative medicine.
So we're there for the community and we try to
treat every patient as though they're a family member.
- That's amazing. - That's great.
- Dr. Airron how about you?
- So as you may know, in the black community
there's a tendency for us to delay medical treatment,
even when we need it.
And therefore present with much more advanced disease.
So we are well aware that people
are more receptive to the advice that they receive
and they're more likely to get screened
when the provider looks like them.
- Yeah.
- That's something that we're big on.
And when we first opened, people were thrilled to have us
in the community to see black doctors and
nurse practitioners and physician assistants
who look like them, who they could trust
because of that deeper cultural understanding.
- Absolutely, representation.
- Wouldn't that be great to see that spread all over
the country to see that?
- The domino effect I hope happens every time we do
a story like this, I'm like I just hope
the domino effect happens.
- Yes!
- And what you're doing is so important.
But Dr. Reuben, I haven't talked to you yet
so I want to talk to you.
- Now you're focused on vaccinating kids as well, right?
- Yes.
You know, kids actually
they get the COVID virus
but they usually have mild symptoms.
But they go home and then they infect their grandparents,
parents and others in the community.
- Right.
- And so what we want to say is the more kids
that gets vaccinated the better.
And we get phone calls all the time here, at home,
our friends asking us about the vaccines.
Even my wife was concerned about getting
our kids vaccinated.
I have a 13 year old and a 15 year old at home
as well as a older son who's 27.
And with our younger kids, we were nervous about doing it
but we went on and did it because what we figured
it's safer to have the kids vaccinated
than not to have the kids vaccinated.
- Yeah.
- That's kinda why we're doing the vaccination drive
here at Premiere.
You know, we're having a vaccination drive
July 24th and 25th.
We're trying to target that 12 to 18 year old crowd.
And we're trying to do something incentive.
It's kind of going along with your show.
We're trying to get back out and get back to normal
and get back around each other.
So for that to incentivize the young children to come out
we're gonna have a DJ,
make a party out of it, have a poetry contest,
a rap contest, dancing, a raffle, some giveaways.
Our biggest drive is to get our community out
to be vaccinated so we can get back to normal.
And so, like you said on the other segments,
let's get back around each other and let's
get the country back to where it needs to be.
- Yes! - Absolutely, amen.
And I mean, gah, you're helping people and also
you know how to throw one hell of a party.
That sounds fun. - Great job guys.
- I know!
All right y'all well I have some good news.
The iconic Lou Malnati's has been serving up deep dish pizza
for 50 years and they want to get you some help
and they want to help the kids.
So they want to be a part of your event.
So they're donating $25 gift cards
for the first 200 people to show up to your event.
That's a $5,000 value and who doesn't like pizza?
- All right, thank you! - Please!
- I just had pizza last night with my friends.
Everybody loves pizza. - The best!
- It's the best way to get, either pizza or alcohol
are the best way to get people places.
- Yes, with cookies to follow.
- With cookies, yeah! (laughs)
- Great job you guys, that's fantastic.