Making Healthcare accessible on the path to Freedom

One of the founders of HFJ began working with this patient population on a volunteer basis providing primary medical care in 2015. In the four years prior to formation of HFJ, most of the volunteer work was coordinating and providing medical care for patients in his primary care office, but one barrier to patients coming to be seen was transportation, both because they would not have it on their own and because if a social worker can give them a ride, the patient will ultimately decide not to attend the visit because the idea of traveling to an unknown place can be re-traumatizing to them given how they were trafficked in the first place. Aside from this barrier, the timing was right as the patient volume increased as well as the recent formation of a local Family Justice Center where multiple governmental and non-governmental organizations providing various aftercare services to the HT/DV population (social work, case management, legal aid, etc) meet in one place to provide these services and collaborate. Thus we saw the need as well as the opportunity to be able to provide free healthcare in a direct primary care model to best serve this patient population.

Direct primary care is a model of care currently reserved for those with money. It is something people usually pay for out of pocket on top of their medical insurance in order to have unlimited access to their primary physician with a monthly or annual retainer fee. While this leads to more comprehensive and thorough healthcare visits and thus better patient outcomes and reduced rates of hospitalization/ER visits, it has historically been criticized as medicine for the rich and healthy. We provide this type of direct medical care free of charge to those that not only can’t afford it, but need it most! The care will be provided either at a patient’s home, at a location of comfort for the patient (such as a trusted case worker’s office) or at our medical office intending to provide free whole-person centered care.