Tracking down Free and Low Cost Healthcare in New York City: Rock Dove Nov 7 2008
[Correction: The day of action on 11/7/1008 has been canceled. See the comment section for another upcoming Rock Dove event.]
The Rock Dove Collective, a “radical community health exchange” is organizing a day of action on 11/7/2008 to find free and low cost health clinics in New York City. The development of a comprehensive list of such clinics – available on the web – would be a great resource.
The NYC Department of Health has free clinics available for STD screening and treatment, dental care, as well as for the treatment of tuberculosis. [In our opinion the City's chest clinics provide the best TB care in New York.] Unfortunately the link to the list of all DOH clinics is down. Calling 311 might be a good place to start to see if a clinic is available for a specific problem.
There are at least three student run free clinics in the city. The Institute for Urban Family Health runs two. The ECHO clinic in the Bronx was the first medical student free clinic, set up by students at AECOM. The New York City Free Clinic in Manhattan is a project of NYU medical students In addtition, students at SUNY/Downstate have organized the Brooklyn Free Clinic.
New York City also has an extensive network of Community Health Centers which provide low cost care to people without insurance.
Free clinics are not the solution to our healthcare problems, indeed they are a symptom of the problem. And yet they also point to what might be the ethos of a national health system devoted not to profit, but to health. I would be happy for interested readers to post additional resources.
What follows is the Rock Dove announcement:
Rock Dove Day of Action!!
Health Clinics for Community Healing
Friday November 7th
10:30am – 4:00pm
Your friendly neighborhood Rock Dove Collective is calling our second Day of Action! On Friday, November 7th, volunteers will fan out across the city, visiting free and low cost health clinics and gathering information about their services from both the staff and the clients who are there receiving services. Our goal is to use this information to create comprehensive profiles of health clinics in NYC, as part of our ongoing effort to make free and low cost health services accessible to those in need.
We will meet up in downtown Manhattan at 10:30am, at a location TBA. Over breakfast and icebreakers, volunteers will receive their travel plans for the day as well as a quick training on how to gather information when visiting a clinic. Volunteers will go out in pairs and hit up 1-2 clinics before we all meet up at 4pm to decompress, share information, eat, drink, and be merry!
How to Contribute:
-Volunteer! Bring your friends! Join us as we hoof it through NYC in search of comprehensive information about free and low cost health services. If you plan on volunteering, RSVP to Freya at freyapowell@gmail.com.
-Donate! If you can’t join us the day of, please donate food and/or cash so that we can feed our volunteers breakfast and snacks, and help them
Posted by Matt Anderson
