People work at the nurses station at Volunteers in Medicine of Southern Nevada Ruffin Family Clinic Wednesday, March 2, 2022.
Monday, March 21, 2022 | 2 a.m.
Dania Affouda arrived in the United States in 2017 from the Ivory Coast in West Africa for a better life.
Once in Las Vegas, she dived into volunteer work with Women’s Resource Medical Center, a faith-based nonprofit where she handled patients who needed reproductive care services like pregnancy testing, ultrasounds, counseling and STI information.
Now, the 38-year-old Affouda is in the same situation as the people she helped back then: 32 weeks pregnant, without insurance and needing care.
Through her volunteer work, Affouda found Volunteers in Medicine of Southern Nevada, a clinic in Las Vegas that provides free health care services for uninsured residents. She was first diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), a common hormonal disorder in women of reproductive age that affects their ability to get pregnant.
Shortly after her diagnosis, Affouda received medication to treat her condition through the clinic. She then became pregnant with her first child this summer and uses the clinic’s new prenatal health care program, which provides her monthly ultrasounds, prenatal vitamins and routine prenatal labs — all for free.
For uninsured Nevadans, Volunteers in Medicine can be a lifeline to the costly barriers of health care in the state. The two local locations combine to see 865 patients, 70% of whom are Latino.
“I know what it means to volunteer because I was a volunteer myself,” Affouda said. “So I totally respect all the work done over there, all the things they provide. That’s a blessing.”
To qualify for the clinic’s services, a patient must be neither insured nor eligible for Medicare, Medicaid, Veterans Affairs benefits or Nevada Check Up. Their income also must not exceed 200% of the federal poverty level.
The obstetrics programs — essential in monitoring the health of the mother and the baby before birth — are available to current patients and will open to new patients soon. Volunteers in Medicine also offers postnatal, or care for the baby after birth, and postpartum, post-delivery care for the mother, services. Deliveries happen at local hospitals like Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center or University Medical Center, which partner with Volunteers in Medicine.
Desiree Zapinsky, the interim CEO of Volunteers in Medicine, said the clinic relies primarily on state and local grants for funding, though some money comes from individual donations and annual charity events.
Alongside its new obstetrics care offerings, the clinic has services like COVID-19 vaccines and a pharmacy with no- or low-cost prescriptions. The clinic also has telemedicine appointments, an offering introduced at the start of the pandemic.
“It’s surprising how many people don’t know we exist,” Zapinsky said. “It’s just a wonderful organization, and also just to see how grateful our patients are to receive care.”
Florence Jameson, an obstetrician and founder of Volunteers in Medicine, was shocked that many of the patients she works with arrived without prenatal care. Emotion rang through Jameson’s voice as she described the urgent need to support Las Vegas’ uninsured population, particularly immigrants.
“If you’re at the hospital, you see these patients come in, and some of them are having a hypertensive crisis because they had no prenatal care,” Jameson said. “And, wow, if you could have just given them prenatal care … you could have done intervention, steroids, delivered early, prevented mothers’ seizures or stroke, prevented the babies even being possibly stillborn from a seizure in pregnancy. So our whole thing here is to provide the prenatal care.”
There were 27.3 million foreign-born workers in the United States in 2020, according to a Pew Research Center study published July 2021 that found immigrants in the country experienced higher unemployment rates during the pandemic. Those millions of immigrants accounted for 17% of the total labor force in the U.S., and they held jobs in construction and hospitality, two industries particularly susceptible to the pandemic’s impact, the study says.
Jameson said that if the state does not support the health of its immigrant population, it is by default failing to create a healthy workforce. The most common illnesses the clinic treats, Jameson said, are cardiovascular hypertensive disease, diabetes, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
“You can’t even go to work if you’re an adult with major illnesses that are not treated,” Jameson said. “So we try to address chronic and acute illnesses here so people cannot just take care of themselves, but they can take care of their families. And then of course that lifts the community up.”
Volunteers in Medicine has two locations in Las Vegas — the Paradise Park Clinic at 4770 Harrison Drive and the Ruffin Family Clinic at 1240 N. Martin Luther King Blvd. Those interested in volunteering with the clinic can contact Volunteers in Medicine through its website.
Lariza Soto, social and behavioral health intervention services director, is the child of immigrants who came to the U.S. from Mexico. Soto feels she is now “helping her own people,” she said.
“This population really just touches my heart,” Soto said. “I can relate to them on a personal level, and I can’t see myself working for any other population.”
