This summer, the Rappahannock Area Health District (RAHD) hopes to offer primary health care to rural areas with its new mobile clinic.
The mobile clinic was one initiative discussed Thursday, during a community health forum at Virginia Credit Union Stadium in Fredericksburg.
The event, sponsored by Mary Washington Healthcare and the Fredericksburg Free Press, was where Allison Balmes-John, the population health manager for the RAHD, unveiled the mobile primary care clinic, which was displayed outside of the stadium for attendees to see.
The forum included discussions on the health and well-being of the area, new ways to get health care to those in need and new directions in education to close the gap between a shrinking medical professional pool and a growing population in need of that medical care.
According to Balmes-John, this mobile clinic was made possible through a combination of state and federal funding. The clinic will be used mainly for immunizations and treating and preventing sexually-transmitted infections when it gets rolled out in June 2025.
“We would really love to do more primary care,” she said. “We’d love to see it reach, especially the communities where they otherwise don’t have access to care. Particularly in the rural areas … .getting to those rural areas is very important.”
The mobile primary care unit is one response from the RAHD in creating methods to increase health care to the community. That response was triggered due to information made available from a presentation made by Balmes-John. The population health manager presented the results of the recent Community Health Assessment (CHA).
The assessment, which is conducted every three years, builds on findings made in 2022 and was taken within the health district, which includes the counties of Caroline, King George, Spotsylvania and Stafford and the City of Fredericksburg. Data used for the CHA was taken from sources such as focus groups, surveys, national and state health data and data from MWHC’s 2024 inpatient screening data.
According to the report, the district is above the state of Virginia average in negative health outcomes such as obesity and high blood pressure. The state of Virginia comes in at 35.30% and 31.50%, respectively, while the health district has a combined average of 38.06% for obesity and 32.38% for high blood pressure. Stafford had the largest increase in adult obesity rates from 30.9% in 2018 to 37.6% in 2022.
Another issue on which the health district exceeds the state average in health outcomes is depression. While the state comes in at 23%, the combined average for the health district comes in at 23.58% as an individual county, Stafford is below the state average at 21.90%.
The CHA also used the data collected from MWHC inpatient screening to find out the needs of the district’s population, Balmes-John reported that five key issues concerning the health district were identified. These were aging-related concerns, behavioral health, healthcare utilization and access, physical activity and healthy eating and social determinants of health.
The forum also featured presentations from educational institutions on what they’re doing to fill the number of positions needed in the local medical community.
Among the speakers was Dr. Nanette Graham. Graham, the associate vice president of Germanna Community College, spoke about the school’s behavioral health technician program, launched in 2024. The program is funded by the Claude Moore Charitable Foundation, which trains students to enter the mental health workforce after going through a curriculum that combines field and internship experience and class training.
“Germanna has a number of healthcare-related programs,” Graham said. “Overall, we have 70-plus programs, and they have really risen in terms of importance and reach and that is due to the leadership of [outgoing president] Dr. (Janet) Gullickson and the various other faculty and administrators in our health sciences division.”
She also discussed the community college’s new doula program, which educates individuals to provide continuous physical, emotional and informational support to expectant mothers. The eight-week program includes synchronous sessions on Zoom and observations labor and delivery. This model was tested, and all nine students who enrolled in the program passed.
Graham said that this program was created in response to a study that found a high infant mortality rate in Fredericksburg due to a lack of access to resources; those with the highest rates of infant mortality come from minority communities. According to data provided by the Virginia Department of Health, the infant mortality rate in the city was recorded in 2023 at 13.7% per 1,000 people, this is higher than the state average of 5.8% per 1,000 people.
The associate vice president also reported that Anthem donated $10,000 and MWHC donated $5,000 to support the program.
Graham also reported that doulas can apply to become Medicaid providers which is how they are compensated for their work. Through medicaid reimbursement, she said that doulas could get upwards of $859 per patient whether privately or through medical insurance.
Dr. Pamela Yeung, a member of the Stafford County Board of Supervisors, attended the forum and commented after all the presenters had spoken. Yeung has a background in healthcare.
“I believe we need to build a safety net for our young students, starting as early as 8th grade,” she said. “They need clear pathways, whether it’s into future workforce skills or continued education. At the same time, we have a serious issue, we have between 10,000 and 20,000 unemployed federal workers in our region.
“These are highly skilled individuals, many with security clearances. It’s time for us to come together, our school systems, surrounding counties, and institutions like Mary Washington Hospital to help retrain and redeploy this talent into new fields such as in healthcare. I’m ready to step up and help lead that effort.”
Disclaimer: Mary Washington Healthcare is a major donor to the Free Press. Donors do not influence newsroom operations.
