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The Register Guard Op Ed: Medical program fights 'nobodiness'
Medical program fights ‘nobodiness’ By Tom Hambly
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Over the past few months, partners in the 100 Percent Access Health Care Initiative have secured enormous levels of participation from the medical community in support of a new demonstration project known as the Medical Access Program, or MAP.
Simply stated, the goal of MAP is to provide access to basic health care for a defined number of uninsured individuals in Lane County who are not eligible for the Oregon Health Plan and have nowhere else to turn. MAP intends to provide coordination and support across health, mental health, dental and social services for uninsured people, who often delay seeking care or use the emergency departments as their sources of basic care.
As care coordinator for this initial group of clients, I find myself amazed at the profound need. I am moved almost beyond words by the genero¬sity of those many health care providers — physicians, patient schedulers, office support staff, to mention but a few — who have embraced the concept and are willing to collaborate in the name of expanding access to care.
The 100 Percent Access partners, our participating health care providers, social service agencies and MAP itself are increasingly important agents of change in our economically stressed community, because the programs they and we are building touch human lives at a time of great social stress and growing human need.
These are lives that matter, that have worth, that have been invisible for far too long — swept aside and muted by the stifling burden of poverty. The 100 Percent Access Coalition and MAP are examples of how our community leaders are joining hands and sharing ideas and resources to create a local response to a growing state and national health care crisis.
Just as valuable as MAP’s clinical purpose, the partners supporting this undertaking are sending a subtle but important message that in our community all people matter, that both poverty and potholes have a place on our community agenda.
These unfailing efforts to extend health care to those in need are nourishing the very roots of humanity. By helping these people meet a basic, fundamental human need, coalition partners are helping them reach the first rung on a ladder so that they can lift themselves up to a better place and toward new opportunity.
Most MAP clients are young adults at a pivotal point in their lives regarding their ability to successfully navigate away from the bitter grip of poverty and need. Martin Luther King Jr. believed that all young people need to build what he called a “life blueprint for success.”
“That first step,” King said, “should be a deep belief in your own dignity, your worth, and your somebodiness. Don’t allow anybody to make you feel that you’re nobody.”
The clients to whom MAP reaches out have been living on that edge of nobodiness. MAP is one step, for some a first step, back toward the safety of a community that cares.
MAP is doing more than providing access to care; MAP is validating clients’ somebodiness and giving them a reason to have hope. If they might find health, they might also find the energy to be more patient and nurturing parents, to find and keep a job, or to be able to sleep through the night free of pain for the first time in months or years.
I talk with clients almost every day who tell me this is happening.
On behalf of our MAP clients, I offer heartfelt gratitude to everyone involved in this endeavor for hearing the call to action and for their generous response. If King were alive today, I’m confident he would acknowledge these actions as visible movement toward social justice for the poorest in our community.
I conclude with another quote from King, one that fits perfectly with the work we have accomplished today and the work we face tomorrow:
“Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men and women willing to be co-workers, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right.”
MAP has indeed rolled into life on the wheels of many people’s hard work, and even if briefly, those people deserve to bask in the warmth of success.
Together united, we can inspire hope and create opportunities for a better tomorrow. By reaching out a hand to one, we can influence the condition of all.
Our clients are telling us that MAP is working, and in ways more intricate and profound than we originally might have imagined. MAP is offering health, hope and humanity.
MAP is doing right!
