April 5, 2024 - Hope Community Medicine held and open house and ribbon cutting for their Mobile Clinic on Friday, April 5, 2024, in Center.
Brandi Emanis, Marketing Director, welcomed everyone to the event and introduced Mike Belgard, CEO - Hope Community Medicine. Belgard thanked all present for attending the open house event and he stated the mobile clinic has been made possible by the T.L.L. Temple Foundation, most of you know about Temple Industry, they’re a big forestry group here in our area and they have a foundation that provides support for non-profits like Hope Community Medicine to help expand healthcare and to help expand access to internet service in rural areas.
“So they gave us a grant to buy this bus and put it into operation, and so we want to for sure thank them for the opportunity to do this,” said Belgard. “As you can tell, if you've been on a tour, we can do anything in this mobile clinic that we can do in our clinic over here on Tenaha Street or in any of our other clinics.”
Belgard listed many of the locations they visit including Panola County: Beckville, DeBerry, Gary, and Deadwood, and in Shelby County: Patroon, Joaquin, and Huxley, and in Sabine County: Milam, and Broadus. He said they are intending to expand that range as much as they can and maintain a routine to be consistent.
Not only does the bus help provide healthcare in the areas they visit, Belgard described their attempts and bringing nutrition to those in need as well, “We also not only provide medical care on this bus, we also bring food out to every place that we go. Make sure that everybody that walks in the door, when they leave, we give them a little sack of groceries that'll provide them three or four meals.”
Belgard said they want to continue to expand in working with food banks to bring food out. Hope Community Medicine now has an in-house pharmacy and they are expecting to integrate that into their mobile unit to shorten the distance for those individuals that may not be able to easily obtain their medications due to the distance of their residence from their medical provider.
“We're also working with our pharmacy staff that we just opened our pharmacy, our in-house pharmacy at the Center clinic. We actually provide low-cost medicines to anybody who's our patient,” said Belgard. “Regardless of your income, it doesn't matter that's not an issue with the medication and whether you have insurance or not that doesn't matter we provide good low-cost medicines to anybody who is our patient. We're also gonna expand that service to the bus, hopefully before too long. And actually, be able to bring out people's medications to them from the pharmacy.”
Belgard gave praise to God for bringing the project together and calling them to perform their mission.
“God has blessed us tremendously through all of this and continues to, and that's all we're here to do. We're just trying to make sure that we're doing what God has called us to do,” said Belgard. “That's our mission, that's our ministry, because this truly is a ministry. I think it's one of the best kept secrets in East Texas, but God has put all of this together, and I'm just, thankful to be a part of it.”
Belgard said Shelby County is the hub of operations for Hope Community Medicine, with 54 employees and service provided to five counties.
To contact Hope Community Medicine and make and an appointment call 936-598-2717. (See April calendar below)
