The University of Arizona Mobile Health Program will soon be able to roll out its second clinic thanks to a $450,000 gift from the Banner Health Foundation.
The Mobile Health Program, run by the UA Department of Family and Community Medicine, is a primary-care practice on wheels that travels to various sites on a regular monthly schedule. The clinic provides free health-care services to those without insurance or limited access to insurance.
Before the newest gift, the program operated on a little more than $400,000 a year and served about 1,800 patients annually.
This next surge of money will pay for staffing and operations of a second mobile clinic that will provide an additional 2,000 patient visits in the mobile family medicine and dental clinics and an additional 350 patient visits in the mobile prenatal clinic.
βThere is such a great need throughout Tucson for affordable primary-care services,β said Dr. Ravi Grivois-Shah, clinical associate professor and medical director of the Mobile Health Program, said in a prepared statement.
βIβm excited to partner with Banner Health Foundation to meet the needs in our communities for those who otherwise would go without care in managing their diabetes, treating infections and injuries and ensuring healthy pregnancies,β he said.
The foundationβs βHighest and Best Use Awardsβ program, which gave the gift, launched in 2007 to distribute unrestricted gifts and a portion of the interest earning on the foundationβs assets, excluding endowments, according to the university.
More than $37 million has been awarded through the program.
Additional financial support comes from Pima County, the March of Dimes Foundation, the Delta Dental of Arizona Foundation, Sonora Quest Laboratories and the Arizona Diamondbacks.
The clinic also receives an endowment from Dr. Augusto and Martha Ortiz, who founded the program more than 40 years ago.
