Wellness – Arlington Free Clinic

Thank you to all who came to Power of Pink: Working Out to Stop Breast Cancer on October 20th and supported the women of Arlington Free Clinic through this fantastic event that raised $26K to help underserved Arlington women detect and fight breast cancer.

Power of Pink: Working Out to Help Stop Breast Cancer

On October 13 and 20, 2016 the 5th Annual Power of Pink: Working Out to Help Stop Breast Cancer events featured a hour workout at Equinox in Bethesda (October 13) and Tysons Corner (October 20), culminating with a luncheon at Redwood Restaurant and Bar in Bethesda and Nostos in Vienna. Learn all about it here: Power of Pink Website.

100 percent of the funds raised at the events were donated directly to three organizations, Arlington Free Clinic, Capital Breast Care Center and Mercy Health Clinic, that provide breast education, screenings and treatment for women in need in our region.

CBCC, Mercy and AFC do not stop with breast health. Once a woman comes to their centers, they address the whole person by responding to additional health and life problems women in need often face. Partnering with over 20 community and government organizations, they connect with these women and establish a relationship to help with a multitude of needs: food and nutrition services, shelter for the homeless population and counseling for emotional concerns and other health services.

For more information, and to register for or sponsor the event, please visit the Power of Pink Website.

June2016_Garden Fifteen guests attended our “We Grow a Garden, We Grow in Health” presentation led by Stephen Hugh, AFC patient representative on the Board of Directors, and Arlington Food Assistance Center (AFAC) volunteer gardener, on May 11th in partnership with the AFAC and its Plot Against Hunger program. AFC patients and AFAC clients learned about gardening, how to make a small container garden for growing microgreens, the nutritional value of their planting, and discussed various recipe ideas for using their microgreens in healthy and affordable family meals. Participants discussed topics such as what “organic” means, and contributed their own gardening stories. One patient, for example, told about her family’s experience cultivating a “milpa” (corn field). Others spoke about attempts at growing cilantro in a window box and tips about growing yucca.

After the presentation, refreshments were enjoyed using microgreens as an ingredient. Radishes and beets were a favorite! We hope to be able to offer more gardening programs with our patients as part of our Wellness program.

The World Health Organization (WHO) describes health as “a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease.” With the global healthcare conversation shifting to “wellness,” we at Arlington Free Clinic have embraced the opportunity to promote patients’ overall health in the spirit of the WHO definition. We are proud of several new initiatives aimed at improving our patients’ quality of life and helping them manage or prevent the progression of their diseases.

We are particularly excited for the launch of Move to Health, our brand new physical activity program created in partnership with Body Dynamics, Inc. that aims to make physical activity a routine part of our patients’ lives. Especially for those challenged by or at risk for chronic disease, building endurance, strength and flexibility can provide tremendous health benefits. Patients participating in Move to Health meet one-on-one with a physical activity counselor to develop an individualized exercise prescription – and have regular phone contact in between visits to keep them on track.

Sedentary lifestyles and poor nutrition have long been linked with negative health outcomes, including higher risk of heart disease, stroke, type II diabetes, depression, and some cancers. These outcomes are especially marked in less educated adults and those below the poverty line, who are less likely to meet recommended physical activity guidelines. Over 80% of AFC patients do not get enough exercise and over 70% suffer from obesity and/or other chronic health conditions. Through Move to Health, we are targeting at-risk patients who are severely deconditioned, pre-diabetic, diabetic, hypertensive, or obese and equipping them with the tools to take ownership of their health.

We’ve faced some challenges unique to our patient population in our effort to integrate wellness initiatives into our programs at AFC. One hurdle to success is the relatively low level of health literacy among many of our patients. When we were working with one patient to integrate jumping jacks – “like she had done in school” – into her exercise routine, she remarked how she never went to school. Additionally, many of our patients work long hours at multiple jobs, leaving little to no time for sufficient sleep or exercise. By working with our patients to understand their realities, we are continuously reevaluating how we present and convey information to our patients to help them find ways to improve their health.

By designing highly personalized wellness programs like Move to Health, and by taking advantage of the opportunity to educate patients while they are already at AFC for other appointments, we are confident that we are helping our patients develop long-term, healthy habits. We are looking forward to continuing to promote the complete mental, physical and social well-being of our patients in ways that are meaningful to them.

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Despite the changes in health care since the passage of the Affordable Care Act, AFC continues to see numerous new faces each month at our lotteries and is receiving more referrals from Virginia Hospital Center and local shelters than ever before. The demand for our services continues to greatly exceed our capacity, and we anticipate the need to remain high for the foreseeable future. Consistently innovating and striving for excellence, AFC continues to look for ways to better serve our patients; to efficiently collaborate with partners to provide the best care at the lowest cost to our community; and to reach out to the medically underserved.

Celebrating Community Partnerships

Arlington Free Clinic is fortunate to be able to work with a network of enthusiastic and engaged safety-net partners. Our strong partnership with Arlington Food Assistance Center (AFAC), for example, allows us to bring additional resources to our patients. We began screening our patients for food insecurity, and as we uncover need we are able to refer patients to AFAC for supplemental groceries. AFAC has also come to AFC during evening clinic sessions to provide cooking demonstrations for patients, highlighting ways for incorporating affordable, healthy ingredients into meals – complementing our already robust schedule of wellness activities.

In addition to ensuring that AFC patients have access to healthy food and nutrition education, this partnership also allows us to educate AFAC clients about the services available at AFC. AFC staff has attended AFAC food distributions to share information about becoming a patient, as well as referrals for free mammograms and breast health education. We are working to strengthen our relationships with other organizations like Shirlington Employment and Education Center (SEEC) and Arlington Street People’s Assistance Network (A-SPAN) to provide all the services our patients need and to ensure that the Arlington residents most in need of a medical home find one here at AFC.

Addressing Emergency Care

AFC is in the process of looking more carefully at our patients who visit the Emergency Room at Virginia Hospital Center (VHC) for urgent care. Our goal is to keep patients out of costly emergency rooms that only address immediate problems and leave larger health issues unresolved. Even though our patients have a medical home at AFC, there can be a large degree of education involved in increasing the ability of patients to manage their own health and make appropriate decisions about when and where to seek care. Once we have better data on who is using the ER and why, we are hopeful that we will be able to meet some of these urgent needs here at AFC. Additionally, we are trying to improve the communication with VHC to provide the necessary and timely follow up care for our patients seen there for true emergencies or scheduled surgeries and procedures.

Medication Compliance

A critical factor in caring for patients is ensuring medication compliance, as medication errors can be a significant source of morbidity and mortality in healthcare. We are working to identify a process for ensuring that both the members of AFC’s health care team and our patients have an accurate and accessible list of medications being taken. Providing our patients with an easily understood list of medications – as well as instructions in how to correctly take them – is complicated by language barriers and literacy issues.

We’re striving to understand and overcome challenges related to medication compliance in order to optimize our pharmacy program’s effectiveness. More than 60% of our patients suffer from one or more serious health conditions including diabetes, hypertension or cancer. AFC’s pharmacy provides medications that help decrease the risk of life-threatening medical events such as heart attack or stroke. Affordable access to needed medications in conjunction with information on how to take them properly allows patients to make the most of the care they receive at AFC.

Thank you for continuing to support the mission of Arlington Free Clinic.

Read more articles from our spring newsletter: