The clinic operational model uses patient-centered standards from PCOR methodology and the Integrative Health framework from NIH to support the clinical, behavioral, and social needs of its patient population. The outcome measures are defined in terms of the county health ranking model to assess the impact at the comparable scale to support the national efforts on Healthy People 2030 goals.
Additionally, other providers have started collaborating for nursing, behavioral health, and social work domains to build capacity for BWCC. The initiative has also attracted chiropractors, Napropaths, acupuncture, and other Integrative Health practitioners, as well as patients who ask for Complementary Alternative Medicine options.
Based on these community health needs, the project collaborators are committing their resources to support the national goals of eliminating health disparities and achieving health equity.
The Free & Charitable Clinic of WFC was established as a telehealth clinic in the Fall of 2019 in response to COVID-19 pandemic pressures from the “uninsured”, who needed to rule out the ER visit while self-treatments. Though the clinic infrastructure for telehealth was laid out to support patient encounters, the need for physical examination remained essential for care delivery. While hosting the vaccine drives during the Winter of 2021, Al Nahda leadership highlighted the Oak Lawn community’s need for an in-person Free Clinic. WFC responded by aligning local community resources, and Be Well Community Clinic, BWCC, emerged.
The BWCC currently resides on the premises of AL Nahda as a collaborative project with WFC as an administrative provider of healthcare and social services and Advocate-Aurora Family Practice Residency program as a physician counterpart. WFC facilitated lab and pharmacy services from partner providers to support the clinical needs of the BWCC patient population. Throughout the post-COVID-19 pandemic phase, the BWCC continued to evolve as the staff and collaborators adjusted their scope of work accordingly to fit the needs of the community demographics while banking on the WFC’s community health paradigm for measurable impact, operational stability, and resource sustainability.
Be Well Community Clinic recognizes the demand for alternative medicine practices within immigrant communities and incorporates the NIH Integrative Approach to Health in its programming. The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (which is a department within the National Institute of Health) defines integrative health as:
“Bringing conventional and complementary approaches together in a coordinated way. Integrative health also emphasizes multimodal interventions, which are two or more interventions such as conventional health care approaches (like medication, physical rehabilitation, psychotherapy) and complementary health approaches (like acupuncture, yoga, and probiotics) in various combinations.”
1. CM99
3. Case Management
5. Medical Decision Making
2. Athena
4. Chronic Disease Management
6. Patient Education
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| Collaborators! |
