Charm City Clinic
Website: charmcityclinic.org
About: Charm City Clinic, Inc. (CCC) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded in September 2009 by Baltimore community leaders and students to help low-income residents access sustainable, high-quality health care and other social services.
Our Health Resource Center (HRC) accompanies low-income Baltimore residents through this difficult process by providing assistance with enrollment in health insurance programs, finding solutions for primary medical care, mental health treatment, and substance abuse disorders, and stabilizing social and economic barriers to care through community resources such as food stamps, energy bill assistance, and job training. Our Preventative Health Screening program complements this intensive community-based case management approach by helping our clients monitor indicators of chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and substance abuse, which are among the primary causes of excess morbidity and mortality in the neighborhoods in which we work. Preventive Health Screenings are offered twice per week during non-traditional hours, on Tuesday evenings and Saturdays, in order to maximize accessibility.
In 2009, when CCC was founded, there were few options for low-income adults in Baltimore to obtain health care and other needed services, and even fewer options to help navigate the complicated landscape of eligibility determinations required to access them. Despite significant expansions in Medicaid and insurance eligibility since implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, thousands of low income Baltimoreans still cannot access life-sustaining services. Our experience suggests that our volunteer-driven, accompaniment-based approach to health resource case management, stressing intensive long-term follow up, helps clients navigate the highly fragmented health and social services safety net that characterizes local low-income neighborhoods. We have assisted approximately 3,500 low-income individuals in this way, the majority of whom reside in East Baltimore neighborhoods surrounding the clinic.
Baltimore Corps Fellow:
