A shelter from the storm
Homeless women, children receive health care
by Linda Singerle
editor@thecharlotteweekly.com

At Shelter Health Services, pediatrician Glenn Holladay and other physicians deliver attentive care for free to patients such as 5-year-old Jasmine who have no permanent home. The nonprofit organization serves residents of the Salvation Army Women’s Shelter on Spratt Street.

An emergency room visit would yield a diagnosis but would not supply antibiotics she can’t afford on her own. One or more children home sick from school – for as long as it might take for the strep to cycle through the family – would prevent her from leaving the Salvation Army Women’s Shelter for the daily job search that can lift her out of her situation.

Health care hope for homeless
Pediatrician Glenn Holladay of Elizabeth Pediatrics volunteers twice a month at Shelter Health Services, a clinic that provides free health care to women and children living in the Salvation Army’s 200-bed shelter on Spratt Street. Holladay recently diagnosed the child’s strep throat, and Shelter Health Services procured antibiotics, which were delivered from a pharmacy the next day. The mother of seven incurred no costs.

Thirty-year-old Michelle, another mother at the shelter, fled South Carolina with little more than her daughter, Jasmine, 5. “When I left, I didn’t have anything on me but my ID. So I can’t get (the documents I need) so I can take Jasmine somewhere else on a sliding scale,” she said. She must obtain a new Social Security card or birth certificate before she can be enrolled in Medicaid – a process that may take a month or two.

In the meantime, they’ve visited Holladay at SHS to get through an ear infection, a sore throat and, most recently, a skin rash they suspected was ringworm. Michelle is grateful for the care they receive at SHS, adding that her only other option is to take Jasmine to the emergency room.

Executive director Michelle Carr said the nurse-driven SHS clinic is set up to provide holistic care for homeless women and children with no health care. “The people I spend a lot of time with are folks who are invisible to the system. We take care of the people that society doesn’t know what to do with,” she said.

Holistic healing of city’s poorest
Carr, a nurse manager, began working with SHS first as a volunteer, then as manager and now as executive director, a role she assumed from Will Cody soon after he became dean of Queens University of Charlotte’s Presbyterian College of Nursing. Carr elaborates on the clinic’s growth over the years.

“I helped build this place from little more than a nurse with a blood pressure cuff and a few pills to a facility that has volunteer physicians and offers free lab tests, free prescriptions, transportation assistance, health education (particularly about diabetes and hypertension, conditions that are prevalent among homeless populations) and more,” she said.

Cody, who led the organization from 1993 to 2005, remains attuned to the nonprofit organization’s mission. “People who are homeless have very deep, broad, specific needs for health care, so that’s what Shelter Health Services is there to deliver,” said Cody. “We will do anything we possibly can to help them when they come through the door.

“If they need shoes and socks, we’ll help them get shoes and socks. If they need a Pap smear, dental care, an antifungal cream for ringworm, we’ll help. If they need a mental health consult, we’ll set that up for them.”

Cody says the need for such a holistic approach is necessary among homeless populations because the current nature of the U.S. health system makes it illegal for emergency rooms to turn away patients – and yet not illegal “to have a doctor see patients for 20 minutes, write them some prescription and discharge them back to the street. It happens all the time,” he said.

Homeless patients may not have the means to get prescriptions filled, nor do they get follow-up treatment to make sure the health concern has been resolved.

Evolution through the years
SHS operates in space donated by the Salvation Army Women’s Shelter and exclusively serves the shelter’s residents but receives no Salvation Army funding, Carr pointed out. The current operation, formed in 2005, is a successor organization to a UNC Charlotte-sponsored clinic established in the same space in 1989. Carr and Cody helped steer SHS through the transition when UNC Charlotte discontinued the provision of health care services to the public, which no longer fit the university’s mission, said Cody.

The move left the clinic without a sponsor in terms of infrastructure and administration, but the clinic had always been funded by grants, so the funding structure did not change. “When we realized that UNC Charlotte was going to cut us loose, we formed a 501c(3) private nonprofit organization so that the work we’d been doing could continue,” said Cody.

In addition to a recent Sisters of Mercy grant for $130,000 and yearly funding from the Merenkas Foundation, Cody says a great cadre of board members, volunteers and staff helped SHS to pull through. “We’re back on our feet again.”

UNC Charlotte student volunteer Chelsea Smith, who helps at SHS once a week, says the underserved population has given her a perspective she would have never gained working in a private practice. Since coming to SHS in January, Smith has built relationships with patients from a different population than the one she’s accustomed to. “They’re great people,” she noted.

From Holladay’s viewpoint, the rewarding experience is tinged with a touch of sadness. “It’s a frustrating and sad situation to … see some of these people over and over and learn of such hardships in their lives. It’s very gratifying for me to be able to do just a little bit for them,” he said. Holladay has been an SHS volunteer for about 18 months.

Wish list
On Holladay’s wish list are more donations of a greater variety of prescription drugs. He also has a personal goal of recruiting more physicians to volunteer. “I would love to be able to recruit enough like-minded colleagues so that we could have a set night every week where a pediatrician would be here,” he said.

Carr says the clinic can always use more funding, more volunteers – either inside or outside the health care profession – and businesspeople to join the board and strengthen connections and awareness in the community. To volunteer or make donations, call 704-334-0000.