Public Health Fellow

The Esperanza Center Health Clinic serves members of the Baltimore metropolitan area¿s immigrant community who are uninsured and uninsurable under the Affordable Care Act. In addition to significant financial barriers to accessing health care, immigrants also face linguistic, knowledge-based, and cultural barriers. The Clinic fills a critical gap in health care access as the only primary care clinic in Maryland whose service model is structured to provide uninsured immigrants with access to free, dignified, and culturally competent health care. Current Clinic services include primary care for adults and children, dental services, on-site specialty services, diagnostic services (labs and imaging), immunization and lead testing, and referrals to community resources for patient¿s specialized medical and non-medical needs. The Clinic is able to serve a broad patient community with limited staff due to its organization as a free clinic and affiliation as a member of the National Association for Free and Charitable Clinics (NAFC). Healthcare outreach workers (and the AmeriCorps member specifically) represent an important aspect of the Clinic's ability to both sustain a largely volunteer run operation, and ensure we are able to offer patients a holistic care model that values their time, voice, and humanity. The AmeriCorps member will expand the Clinic's ability to recruit and manage new clinical and administrative volunteers, engage new partners and enrich existing partnerships, support an approach to patient communication that is human-centered and accessible, and ensure appropriate written Standard Operating Procedures are in place to ensure continuity of care and policy regardless of potential changes to staff or the service environment. The AmeriCorps member(s) will also have direct patient interaction, administering mental and physical health surveys to diabetic patients, as well as assisting patients in accessing resources external to the clinic.