SPECTRUM 1 NEWS—Volunteers in Medicine adding a new location in Pittsfield
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BY DAN REIDY BERKSHIRE COUNTY
BERKSHIRE COUNTY, Mass. - Volunteers in Medicine announced their second location will open in Pittsfield in the coming months.
“We all believe that health care should be a basic human right," said executive director Ilana Steinhauer. "But we still have a population in Massachusetts who are ineligible for health insurance.”
What You Need To Know
Volunteers in Medicine Berkshires, located in Great Barrington, provides free health care to those in the region who are ineligible for health insurance and income-qualified
VIM announced they are expanding with the addition of a Pittsfield location
VIM provides both the clinical and nonclinical services. Community Health Workers assess needs like food security, housing, employment, and childcare
According to VIM, about 90% of their clients are immigrants
Steinhauer said some of their clients are people who may have a lapse in their insurance, but primarily VIM works with the county’s immigrant population to meet their needs.
“We define health care in a really broad sense," Steinhauer said. "We have clinical care here. We have medical and dental and behavioral health, optometry, orthopedics, but we also have what we call community health workers who work on the social determinants of health.”
Natalia DeRuzzio and Marcela Urrea work in patient services connecting clients with resources like housing, food, employment and childcare. They said Volunteers in Medicine strives to break barriers for immigrants.
“When they are coming here, everything is new," Urrea said. "The language, the area, culture, everything.”
“We are members of the immigrant community, we know the struggle, we have walked that journey in a way," DeRuzzio said. "We all walk different journeys, but we have some experience in what that means; not being able to speak the language, to understand and to advocate for yourself. So, we do a lot of that in a systematic way.”
The system in place at Volunteers in Medicine helps support more than 1,300 patients. Steinhauer said about 4% of people in Massachusetts are without health insurance and part of their mission is to make care more accessible.
“VIM is something that the Berkshires can be so proud of," Steinhauer said. "This does not exist in other parts of the state, and we are one of the largest, if not the largest free health care center in the state. And to continue to do this work is something we take really seriously. And we are excited to do it and excited to have this expansion into Pittsfield.”
The plan is for the new Pittsfield clinic to open sometime this fall.