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The first of these departments is medicine allocation. "Our pharmacy is one of our most important sections," notes Sara. "It provides our patients with free drugs, regardless of insurance status. This is important, because you can receive great primary care from a doctor, but if you can’t afford the medicine, it’s not going to help you in the slightest." For chronic diseases such as diabetes, this is especially important, since the condition can be managed with the appropriate drugs.
If the patient has a sickness that necessitates the use of equipment or lifestyle change (i.e. asthma, arthritis, hypertension), they are referred to the Education section, which instructs the patient on the nature of their ailment. Often in one-on-one sessions, the educator or JCTM will train the patient how to use tools, such as blood-sugar level indicators, and suggest necessary modifications to their way of life. "Education is particularly important for us, since it teaches the clinicians the valuable philosophy that a health care provider must take into account the entire context of a patient’s life," explains Sara. "If they tell a patent to eat well and exercise more, is this feasible? Does the patient know what a balanced meal is? Does the patient live in an area safe enough to exercise in? Physicians everywhere must recognize that simply seeing a patient and prescribing a treatment is not enough."
To this end, all visitors must be seen by the Social Services department. Workers here screen patients for Connecticut state insurance eligibility, as well as qualifications for free care at the Yale-New Haven Hospital or the Hospital of St. Raphael. They aid patients in finding resources for mental health, dental, and eye care, which HAVEN does not provide, and help them fill out the appropriate paperwork. Social services providers write letters of appeal on behalf of patients with existing medical debt to relieve or work out more favorable payment plans for them. In addition, the department also directs patients to job training, low-cost food resources, and other community health providers.
Advocacy – It All Begins with a Mission
HAVEN originated in 2004 through the efforts of students from Yale medical school’s class of 2007 and 2008. These first few individuals, frustrated by the lack of primary care available to the poor and uninsured in New Haven, began a study to understand the magnitude of the problem. Together with students of the School of Public Health and Epidemiology, they began an exhaustive study, which determined two things:
"1. No stationary free clinic existed.
The only consistent source of free medical care in New Haven was the mobile Yale Community Health Care Van.
2. A growing population of New Haven residents lack access to medical care.
Although the total number of uninsured people is elusive, current health care and census statistics reveal that New Haven possesses an excess of risk factors correlating to uninsured status."
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