Nurse meeting with a senior male patient – Getty Images stock photo
Founded in 1994, The Birmingham Free Clinic is located in Pittsburgh’s South Side. A service of the Program for Health Care to Underserved Populations (PHCUP), it is one of six clinics locally that provide care at no cost to patients. Birmingham is one of the longest-operating free clinics in Pennsylvania.
The clinic serves those who are chronically lacking health insurance, and particularly those community members who are historically excluded from traditional care access and significantly impacted by social determinants.
Staff and volunteers include physicians, pharmacists, nurses, physical and occupational therapists, health professional students, Certified Community Health Workers, AmeriCorps National Service Members, and other providers. It’s also supported by individual donations, student-led fundraising events, and UPMC’s Division of Internal Medicine.
The clinic offers primary, specialty, and preventive care, health education, and medications. They provide medical and social services and case management — and help patients deal with services that require insurance.
The clinic’s goal is to give uninsured and medically underserved people uninterrupted, quality, and inclusive healthcare. That includes helping patients prevent illness and disease through education and empowerment.
Each week, the clinic offers the same kind of care you’d normally receive at a doctor’s office, such as healthcare maintenance, vaccines, and blood and urine tests.
Specialty clinics for heart, hearing, skin, eye, and more are also available. Other services focus on children’s health, mental health, dental health, and quitting smoking, among others.
A long-time partner of UPMC Hillman Cancer Center, the clinic is able to offer breast and cervical cancer screenings to their patients at no charge. These are crucial preventive health screenings and follow-up that their patients might otherwise never receive. Through this partnership, the clinic was able to provide 60 mammograms, with 6 biopsies, as well as 50 cervical cancer screenings, with breast and cervical health education, for 127 unique patients in 2022!
Partnerships and support from flagship providers such as UPMC Hillman are critical to helping safety-net providers such as Birmingham mitigate health disparities and address social determinants and health justice for our fellow community members.
Learn more on the clinic’s website at birminghamfreeclinic.wixsite.com, including Frequently Asked Questions, and learn more about other free clinics in our region at www.freeclinicspa.org
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