PHC Staff Reflections on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day
January 18th, 2021
PHC Staff Reflections
As we consider a painful year gone by that includes the murder of George Floyd, the greatly increased risk of hospitalization and death related to Covid-19 for people facing systemic discrimination, and the appropriate unrest in the community and country related to these inequities, PHC reached out to its staff members to comment on the impact Dr. Martin Luther King had on their lives and our work at PHC. Please find their reflections here. PHC will continue its pursuit to eliminate health disparities until we, collectively, achieve health justice for all.
Health centers began in the 1960s during the “War on Poverty”. Their role was to attend to and reverse the impacts of racism and poverty in America. As we have witnessed time and again, we have yet to succeed in creating health justice in the US and in this region. To quote Rev. King, “The time is always right to do what is right.” In the upcoming year, we are focusing our energy by Leading With Race, explicitly but not exclusively, through conversations, measures, and actions in partnership with patients and the community.
January 18th, 2021
PHC Staff Reflections
As we consider a painful year gone by that includes the murder of George Floyd, the greatly increased risk of hospitalization and death related to Covid-19 for people facing systemic discrimination, and the appropriate unrest in the community and country related to these inequities, PHC reached out to its staff members to comment on the impact Dr. Martin Luther King had on their lives and our work at PHC. Please find their reflections here. PHC will continue its pursuit to eliminate health disparities until we, collectively, achieve health justice for all.
- “I learned about Martin Luther King Jr in fourth grade. It’s sad that in 50 years, it seems that we still have such a way to go. We should be treating each other with humanity, not judging each other by the color of our skin. Our work, and our world, should have no boundaries. It is free to be kind, and kindness is good for everyone’s health!”
- “To me the most powerful thing about Dr. King’s legacy and message is that it remains aspirational, forward looking and based in universal values. We’ve come a long way in the last 50 years, but still have further to go to achieve racial and social justice. I love the arc of the moral universe quote as an articulation of the idea that we can do this work in our time, but that those who have gone before and those who will come after are our partners in the struggle towards equity and justice.”
- “I would hope that we echo the sentiments Dr. King expressed so eloquently in his “I have a Dream” speech…specifically where he wished for a day when his four little children will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. Character, as he noted, is universal and something we sorely need right now. I feel our message of access for all ties in with this. A just society does not pigeonhole people based on discredited ideas, but rather treats them as individuals deserving of care. An equitable society likewise does not rely on discredited ideas but allows for (and in fact demands) access based on need and provides relief for those who may not otherwise be able to afford services based on economic circumstances. Anything less, I feel, does not meet Dr. King’s goals and ideals.”
- “Dr. King to me is the Icon of equality. His amazing speeches and people that he brought together was what we are missing today. With a country spilt right now we need unity and equality. I believe Dr. King represented what we strive for and need. No matter who the person is they deserve the equality that anyone else would.”
- “MLK Jr Day means that we should all have the possibility of pursuing life, liberty, and peace in a country where we value individual rights as well as work collectively to serve the greater good.”
- “I remember a lot from 1968. Dr King, Bobby Kennedy, and my father all passed away that year. I was a junior in high school living outside of Pontiac, Michigan where there were active school bus burnings and protests going on to stop schools from being integrated with black students. I had several friends attending those schools and they had no problem with the issue, but their parents sure did. What stands out was at my father’s funeral, over half the congregation present were African American and people I had never met as my father’s business was located in downtown Detroit. These wonderful people drove at least 45 minutes to an hour to honor my dad, regardless of the atmosphere of the surrounding neighborhood. It was only after I was in college (at Michigan State) and Black Power, and an active Black caucus were going on, did I realize the true significance of their gesture. My father had always instilled a belief of the equality of everyone and I was, and still am amazed and saddened that this is such a foreign concept to some people. What is truly inspiring is that Dr King’s words still live on so strong.”
Health centers began in the 1960s during the “War on Poverty”. Their role was to attend to and reverse the impacts of racism and poverty in America. As we have witnessed time and again, we have yet to succeed in creating health justice in the US and in this region. To quote Rev. King, “The time is always right to do what is right.” In the upcoming year, we are focusing our energy by Leading With Race, explicitly but not exclusively, through conversations, measures, and actions in partnership with patients and the community.
PHC Giving Tuesday Event: Reach out and Read!
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This Giving Tuesday, your donation can help PHC physicians and staff put amazing, high-quality books in the hands of more children and their families. Click the images above or this link to donate!
At PHC, we use the Reach out and Read model to distribute books to children and families while empowering parents to interact in positive ways around literacy for children of all ages. During the COVID-19 pandemic especially, having resources in the home to work on literacy development is crucial. For some of our families, the books we provide to them are the only ones they have in their homes. By supporting PHC in providing books and education about literacy to families, you are participating in an evidence-based program to intervene at a crucial point in children’s lives. You are also contributing to a program meant to help combat some of the effects of income inequality that are pervasive in our society, including differences in the degree of preparation for kindergarten that children receive.
Learn more about Reach out and Read.
Donate today and help us provide more books to more children!
At PHC, we use the Reach out and Read model to distribute books to children and families while empowering parents to interact in positive ways around literacy for children of all ages. During the COVID-19 pandemic especially, having resources in the home to work on literacy development is crucial. For some of our families, the books we provide to them are the only ones they have in their homes. By supporting PHC in providing books and education about literacy to families, you are participating in an evidence-based program to intervene at a crucial point in children’s lives. You are also contributing to a program meant to help combat some of the effects of income inequality that are pervasive in our society, including differences in the degree of preparation for kindergarten that children receive.
Learn more about Reach out and Read.
Donate today and help us provide more books to more children!
PHC Hiring Clinician Positions for Mobile Support Team
Are you a behavioral health clinician who cares about our community?
Do you want to make a difference in the lives around you?
Be sure to check out PHC’s newly posted clinician positions!
PHC is currently hiring for part-time and full-time clinician positions for the Mobile Support Team, an exciting new partnership with Missoula City Fire Department.
More information about the program:
Missoula CARES Program
PHC Who We Are
Learn more and APPLY HERE!
Source: Missoula Current
"[...] The mobile crisis unit will respond to calls identified by emergency officials as involving a behavioral health crisis. The unit will respond to calls deemed safe by dispatch or first responders and cover an area within 20 minutes of the downtown core."
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PHC Announces new logoWe are thrilled to share our new logo! It is the result of a collaborative process that began in November, 2019 with input from staff, patients and our volunteer board of directors.
This fresh symbol of our work and values reaffirms our promise to the communities we proudly serve – that excellent, whole-person health care is accessible for all people, regardless of income, insurance status, race, gender, age, housing status or anything else. PHC is a place for those with many resources and those with few. It is a place where people of all ages and all backgrounds are treated with compassion, dignity and respect. In short (and as we love to say), everyone is welcome at PHC. In 1989, a group of community partners teamed up to address the unmet medical needs of Missoulians by creating the Partnership for Access Pilot Project. In 1992, that pilot project became Partnership Health Center. As we move forward with our new logo, we recognize that our work today is built on the remarkable efforts of countless staff and volunteers throughout our 30+ year history. From all of us at PHC, we offer our most sincere thanks to those who have made our work possible. Building on the amazing contributions of staff and volunteers past and present, PHC has grown to become a large, multi-site, vibrant organization of 240 staff serving a diverse group of 16,000 individuals across Missoula and Mineral counties. We are doctors, dentists, psychologists, pharmacists, nurses, social workers, therapists, housing navigators, medical assistants, patient service representatives, patients ourselves – and so much more. Most importantly, we are your fellow community members, and we are honored to serve you. Through any challenge our community faces now and in the future, we hope this new logo serves as a reminder that compassionate, patient-centered health care is within reach for all people, always. A special thanks goes out to Gecko Designs for their outstanding, collaborative work designing this new logo. Any questions regarding the new logo can be directed to Communications and Development Administrator Eric Halverson at halversone@phc.missoula.mt.us. |
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Source: Missoula Current
"Many in our community and nation have engaged in a robust debate about the benefit of wearing a face-covering in pubic and when social distancing is not possible. As a family physician with 20 years of experience, I have a unique perspective and ability to evaluate the scientific literature surrounding COVID-19. Further, as Chief Medical Officer at Partnership Health Center, I have a unique responsibility to ensure that my evaluation is in the best interest of the 16,000 patients we serve, my colleagues caring for those patients, and the broader populations of Missoula and Mineral Counties [...]
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Source: Missoula Current
"Our healthcare system has been designed to work very effectively for those with the power to write the rules and regulations, but has overlooked those who historically have not had a voice. Addressing the inherent inequities requires a focused and deliberate effort. We, within the healthcare community, must reassess how we provide care and the barriers that the system creates. This begins with listening to those who have been on the receiving end of injustices, like the stories I hear from my patients in clinic on a regular basis. Then we should take that information and actively remove obstacles to care [...]
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Source: Missoulian
In just a few months, visitors to the Missoula Food Bank & Community Center will be able to see a doctor, dentist or behavioral health care provider while picking up food with the opening of a satellite Partnership Health Center clinic.
The clinic located on the second floor of the Food Bank is set to open in September. It will offer services to anyone, regardless of their ability to pay or whether they use the Food Bank for nutritional assistance.
Read more...
The clinic located on the second floor of the Food Bank is set to open in September. It will offer services to anyone, regardless of their ability to pay or whether they use the Food Bank for nutritional assistance.
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Source: Seeley Swan Pathfinder
Hello Seeley Swan friends and community members!
First, I wish to thank the support of our community throughout the evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic and the understanding of many patients who had appointments canceled. Second, Partnership Health Center is taking every precaution to keep everyone safe and I feel fortunate to work for an organization taking this public health crisis seriously. Read more... |
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Source: Missoulian
Karen Ayers, a registered nurse and clinic coordinator at the Seeley Swan Health Center run by Partnership Health Center, originally came to Montana from her native upstate New York with intentions of getting into forestry.
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Source: Missoula Current
The former medical director of Community First Care in Missoula will step in as the chief medical officer at Partnership Health Center, the organization announced this week.
As CMO, James Quirk, Jr. will oversee all clinical services while supporting strategic partnerships at the local, state and federal level. He began the job on April 1. Read more... |
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Source: Missoula Current
"While COVID-19 poses a significant threat to our physical health, it also threatens our mental and emotional health. We're concerned about infection and the health of loved ones. We're struggling with loss of social connection, daily routines, long-anticipated milestones (e.g., weddings, graduations), and our sense of normalcy. We're scared about bills, our livelihoods, and our futures. And if we were already feeling socially or financially on the margins, the virus is amplifying our sense of vulnerability [...]
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Source: Missoula Current"As a community health provider and as a new mom I want to be an advocate and supporter in helping new mothers receive the compassion and support they need as they adjust to everything a new baby brings."
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Source: Missoula Current
"[...] We know - with robust scientific support - that health is improved when individuals and communities feel a sense of agency to address the pressures affecting their lives. By listening to everyday people, inviting them to share their experiences with others, and connecting them to the decision-making processes that shape our community, we can enhance that sense of agency [...]"
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Source: Missoula Current
"Mental wellbeing is essential to overall health. It provides the foundation for a productive life filled with meaning, vitality and connection. Yet 1 billion people globally are affected by a mental health or substance abuse disorder [...]"
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Source: Missoulian
"The Missoula City Council took a step toward making healthcare more affordable and accessible for the city's low-income residents when it agreed to move forward with an agreement for Partnership Health Center to open a satellite health clinic in the Missoula Food Bank and Community Center building [...]"
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Source: Missoula Current
"[...] Research shows clear developmental benefits for children when they engage in play. Play is shown to increase social and emotional intelligence, as well as to help develop executive functioning - meaning it increases a child's ability to work through problems or tasks using logic rather than impulsivity [...]"
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Source: Missoulian
Partnership Health Center is the continuity clinic for the Family Medicine Residency of Western Montana.
Read the full story...
Read the full story...
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Source: Missoula Current
"Illness, especially illness at the holidays, also brings opportunity [...] Priorities are made clear. It is time with each other that we really want. Time is the only valuable commodity, and while illness often reminds us of that, illness during the holidays makes it even clearer."
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Source: Missoula Current"When working with families and children who present to the clinic for behavioral concerns, such as being aggressive, not following directions or being impulsive or distracted, I often slow down, encourage some reflection and support a pathway for developing tools for parents."
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A New Angle Podcast:
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Source: Missoula Current
"[...] Most of us know that getting out into nature is beneficial, whether it's the exercise, clean air, vitamin D production, or simply taking a break from our frenetic daily lives, but science has discovered that visiting a forest has real, quantifiable health benefits. These can be both mental and physical, and extend beyond what most of us understand [...]
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Source: Missoulian
"As the directors of four of Montana's largest community health centers, we are writing today to urge Congress to reauthorize the federal funding that keeps the doors of primary care community health centers across the state open and welcome to all [...]"
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Source: Missoula Current
"When I started my career as a nurse over 20 years ago, I did so because I believed good medicine was the answer to the suffering I saw in the ER and in the streets.
But nothing in our training revealed to my colleagues and me that our work in delivering health care, while critical, was downstream of structural issues that negatively impact individuals and entire populations [...]" Read More... |
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Source: Missoula Current
"[...] In the medical field, there has been a movement to bring mental and emotional health treatment into our primary care clinics. What that means is that people can meet with a therapist or counselor the very same day that they see their primary medical provider. Talk about the best of both worlds! There is no need for an additional appointment or hour-long searches on google to find a therapist [...]"
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Source: Missoulian
"Part of the Missoula Food Bank and Community Center is set to be transformed into a Partnership Health Center clinic, thanks to nearly $434,000 from the Missoula Redevelopment Agency [...]"
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Source: Missoula Current
"At Partnership Health Center, we believe that access to medical, behavioral health and dental care is critical for maintaining health, but we know that is not enough.
Health and well-being begin in the communities where we live, work and play, well before we set foot in a doctor's office[...]" Read More... |
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Source: Missoula Current
"This might sound a little unexpected coming from a doctor, but I want to know about your goals and dreams. Some of the questions I love to ask my patients include things like: 'What's your background?' 'What do your days look like?' 'Who are the people (or creatures) most important to you?' and 'What brings you joy?'
Sometimes these questions might feel personal, but there is growing evidence that the answers are essential to your health." Read More... |
Source: Missoulian
"This Labor Day, Partnership Health Center would like to celebrate its staff, volunteer board and patients for helping us be a strong employer and provider in Missoula and Mineral counties.
The 13 health centers across Montana are on the front lines when it comes to the health issues that are impacting our communities [...]"
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The 13 health centers across Montana are on the front lines when it comes to the health issues that are impacting our communities [...]"
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Source: Missoulian
"These are challenging times in America. Finger-pointing, rigid thinking and so-called "otherizing" are on the rise, while bipartisanship and bridge-building are on the decline. Nothing good comes from these fear-driven philosophies and behaviors, especially with regard to health outcomes. When we stay small, protected and separate, our anxiety grows and our sense of health and well-being diminishes. We believe that Missoula and the nation are better than that [...]"
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