University of Cincinnati medical students operate health clinic for uninsured patients


Caroline Hensley wants everyone to have access to quality health care, whether or not they have insurance.
Hensley is a medical student at the University of Cincinnati. Before going to med school, she worked at a health center that catered to people without insurance, and she saw that patients came from far and wide — including other states — in order to receive care. This inspired her to start a free health clinic, which she called The Healing Center.
At The Healing Center, Hensley and her fellow medical students see patients, but are supervised by a doctor. They help connect patients with other resources, and Spanish translators are available. The University of Cincinnati College of Pharmacy is also involved, working to get affordable medications to patients. The clinic is conveniently on a bus route, and while it's only open on Saturdays for the time being, the plan is to expand the hours.
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"I think, for me personally, just seeing what need there is out there and seeing how starting with just one person having a voice and one person identifying a problem, that can grow into something so much bigger, has been really impactful for me," Hensley told WLWT. Catherine Garcia
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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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