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Some haven’t gotten professional health care in their entire adult lives.
Some are just a jail stint removed from addiction to heroin and fentanyl.
Some have lifestyles that often lead to both disease and pregnancy.
Starting this week, they’re Marcia Smith’s new patients.
Ms. Smith, a nurse practitioner with 35 years of experience, works for Adagio Health in a new unit of Renewal Inc.’s halfway house, a block away from the Allegheny County Jail. She’s the centerpiece of the unit, opening Wednesday, which intends to provide preventive health care and treatment to women and men moving from incarceration to freedom.
“Some of the clients that I’ll see haven’t had health care at all,” said Ms. Smith, during a short pause from her work preparing the examining rooms, hours before the first patients were set to arrive. “This will be new and exciting — a little bit of a challenge, but a challenge I think I can handle.”
Renewal tries to prepare former inmates for the real world, housing at its Second Avenue building as many as 300 people, around a quarter of whom are women. Adagio provides health care help to people — especially women — in unconventional situations. A year ago, Adagio President B.J. Leber and Renewal president Douglas Williams started talking about the gaps in their nonprofit efforts.
Now, in a three-room suite near Renewal’s front door on Second Avenue, Adagio will be seeing women and men, screening and examining them for problems including sexually transmitted disease, addiction, birth control needs and breast and cervical cancers — or any other concerns they might raise. Adagio can provide basic treatment, or arrange for care.
They’ll be told, “‘I care about you. So let’s talk about what you need.’ And maybe that hasn’t happened for many of these people,” said Kathy Risko, chief of external affairs for Adagio. Maybe a few of their worries — a sexually transmitted disease, a birth control need, a referral for drug treatment — can be relieved. “So I think that gives them another chance to go out and become part of successful society.”
The two organizations teamed up to prepare the unit. They’ll bill insurance, usually Medical Assistance, for the care provided. Renewal is hoping to expand its Second Avenue location to the property next door, and expects that the unit will then grow into a full-fledged health clinic.
For now, when the patient leaves Renewal, they’ll be invited to continue to get health care help by visiting any of Adagio’s eight — soon to be nine — community service centers. They might also be directed to Adagio’s other new partnership, with UPMC Magee-Women’s Hospital and the Allegheny Health Network West Penn Pregnancy Recovery Program, which aims to help people with opioid addictions to get family planning, birth control and prenatal services.
Health care in the justice system is rarely easy, and the opioid epidemic has only made it harder.
“You get an addict, male or female, that’s so desperate to get that drug in,” said Mr. Williams. They eventually run out of money, things to pawn, and people from whom they can readily steal. “There’s only one resource left: That’s themselves.” Some sell themselves, or provide sexual favors in return for housing or drugs. That is leading to surging numbers of cases of Hepatitis C and HIV, as well as the births of babies in opioid withdrawal.
When the user is a parent, it can destabilize an entire family. Mr. Williams said that improving a person’s health, before returning them to the community, can have reverberations through families and generations.
“When I walk out of here, I’m going to see maybe some visitors coming out of the Allegheny County Jail, and they might be hanging on to some little kids, by the hand,” said Mr. Williams. “I want them to have the best possible chance to avoid what we’re doing in this building.”
People struggling with addiction can call Adagio Health at 866-520-9139 or go to www.adagiohealth.org.
Click here to read the full article.
Some are just a jail stint removed from addiction to heroin and fentanyl.
Some have lifestyles that often lead to both disease and pregnancy.
Starting this week, they’re Marcia Smith’s new patients.
Ms. Smith, a nurse practitioner with 35 years of experience, works for Adagio Health in a new unit of Renewal Inc.’s halfway house, a block away from the Allegheny County Jail. She’s the centerpiece of the unit, opening Wednesday, which intends to provide preventive health care and treatment to women and men moving from incarceration to freedom.
“Some of the clients that I’ll see haven’t had health care at all,” said Ms. Smith, during a short pause from her work preparing the examining rooms, hours before the first patients were set to arrive. “This will be new and exciting — a little bit of a challenge, but a challenge I think I can handle.”
Renewal tries to prepare former inmates for the real world, housing at its Second Avenue building as many as 300 people, around a quarter of whom are women. Adagio provides health care help to people — especially women — in unconventional situations. A year ago, Adagio President B.J. Leber and Renewal president Douglas Williams started talking about the gaps in their nonprofit efforts.
Now, in a three-room suite near Renewal’s front door on Second Avenue, Adagio will be seeing women and men, screening and examining them for problems including sexually transmitted disease, addiction, birth control needs and breast and cervical cancers — or any other concerns they might raise. Adagio can provide basic treatment, or arrange for care.
They’ll be told, “‘I care about you. So let’s talk about what you need.’ And maybe that hasn’t happened for many of these people,” said Kathy Risko, chief of external affairs for Adagio. Maybe a few of their worries — a sexually transmitted disease, a birth control need, a referral for drug treatment — can be relieved. “So I think that gives them another chance to go out and become part of successful society.”
The two organizations teamed up to prepare the unit. They’ll bill insurance, usually Medical Assistance, for the care provided. Renewal is hoping to expand its Second Avenue location to the property next door, and expects that the unit will then grow into a full-fledged health clinic.
For now, when the patient leaves Renewal, they’ll be invited to continue to get health care help by visiting any of Adagio’s eight — soon to be nine — community service centers. They might also be directed to Adagio’s other new partnership, with UPMC Magee-Women’s Hospital and the Allegheny Health Network West Penn Pregnancy Recovery Program, which aims to help people with opioid addictions to get family planning, birth control and prenatal services.
Health care in the justice system is rarely easy, and the opioid epidemic has only made it harder.
“You get an addict, male or female, that’s so desperate to get that drug in,” said Mr. Williams. They eventually run out of money, things to pawn, and people from whom they can readily steal. “There’s only one resource left: That’s themselves.” Some sell themselves, or provide sexual favors in return for housing or drugs. That is leading to surging numbers of cases of Hepatitis C and HIV, as well as the births of babies in opioid withdrawal.
When the user is a parent, it can destabilize an entire family. Mr. Williams said that improving a person’s health, before returning them to the community, can have reverberations through families and generations.
“When I walk out of here, I’m going to see maybe some visitors coming out of the Allegheny County Jail, and they might be hanging on to some little kids, by the hand,” said Mr. Williams. “I want them to have the best possible chance to avoid what we’re doing in this building.”
People struggling with addiction can call Adagio Health at 866-520-9139 or go to www.adagiohealth.org.
Click here to read the full article.