Newsletter Bread for the City
@BreadfortheCity
FALL 2013
www.BreadfortheCity.org
We’re Expanding Healthcare Access in DC
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his year, Bread for the City plans to serve an additional 900 patients in our medical clinic, and we’re expanding medical care services to further address mental illness in our community. How? You made it happen. An anonymous donor pledged to match every gift made to our medical clinic in June up to $100,000. Then,
Nearly 124,000 people across the District lack regular access to healthcare. Because of you, we’re expanding care to the people who need it most. Thanks for making it happen! thousands of our supporters banded together and exceeded the challenge, raising $209,162.09 to expand healthcare access to people in need. Thank you. Your incredible support is allowing us to hire another doctor in our clinic, and our new community nurse just started. We’ve also brought on a psychiatric consultant to better equip our providers to recognize and treat mental illness, and we found a behavioral health consultant to help us launch our behavioral therapy program.
That’s not all! We’re still seeking a third doctor and a physician assistant or nurse practitioner to join our medical team this year! Together, we’ll work to better meet the healthcare needs of our community. Learn more about work and volunteer opportunities at Bread for the City by visiting BreadfortheCity.org/Get-Involved
Meet Our New Medical Staff! Gerald Sabb, RN, a South Carolina native, came to us this summer to offer new nursing services in our medical clinic — including, but not limited to, meeting with walk-in patients, addressing prescription refill requests, providing clerical support in the clinic, and even digging splinters out of staff’s feet! “I wanted to be in a clinical setting where I could engage with the public in a more personal, private setting than the hospital,” he says. “I wanted to encourage and promote healthy lifestyles utilizing my clinical background for patient education.” Welcome aboard, Gerald! You already fit right in.
Kahlil Johnson, MD also joined us this summer to provide monthly interactive training sessions for our primary care and social work teams, so we can better address the mental healthcare needs of our community. Apart from providing training, Kahlil has a deep interest in mental health policy creation. “Helping to alleviate suffering while simultaneously empowering people to quietly — or sometimes loudly — educate their peers about mental illness has been a very rewarding experience for me,” he says. “My hope is that the treatment I provide, or encourage, leads to increased empathy and support from the community, with an equal or greater reduction in stigma towards those who are suffering from mental illness.”
Taking Control of Health and Housing: IT WAS ANOTHER FRIDAY MORNING AT BREAD FOR THE CITY, and Ms. Shiloh Johnson sat in the lobby nursing her head. She asked me if we had found her housing yet and showed me the hospital bracelet wrapped tightly around her thin wrist. She had just been discharged from the emergency room at Howard University — her third visit to the ER that week for a seizure that could have been prevented if she’d taken her medicine each day. This is the case for many people who are homeless and struggle to maintain their health when just surviving becomes a way of life. Ms. Johnson is a client in Bread for the City’s Representative Payee Program as well as our medical clinic and legal department. She had been struggling with her housing situation and started spending nights sleeping on the streets to avoid drug-dealing neighbors in her apartment and violent confrontations in the neighborhood. Eventually, she chose to abandon her unit in hopes of escaping her dangerous neighborhood. “Something’s gotta change,” Ms. Johnson declared and began to work with Bread for the City and her caseworker at Catholic Charities to maintain her housing voucher and find another apartment.
Congratulations to Our Achievers!
“Something’s gotta change”
For the next six months, Ms. Johnson remained homeless, unable to return to her old apartment while waiting for the DC Housing Authority to approve her voucher and a new lease. In the meantime, without anywhere to keep her belongings, she carried her precious few items (clothes and food) in any bag she could find — though she often lost these necessities due to theft or just forgetfulness. The constant movement and lack of stability made it hard for her to keep track of anything, especially her medication. As a result, Ms. Johnson’s condition worsened. She had multiple seizures a day, leaving her feeling dizzy, frail and weak for hours.
receives from Bread for the City and the option to go home to a safe environment. “I feel much better,” she said, “I don’t have to worry about surviving and can just live.”
Stable housing is something you and I may take for granted, but for Ms. Johnson, lack of control over her surroundings was a large part of her struggle to survive. Over the months, Bread for the City’s housing attorneys worked to preserve Ms. Johnson’s housing voucher and her case workers continued to search for apartments. Finally, in late May, Ms. Johnson found a new place. Although she continues to come to Bread for medical care, case management, and rep payee services, she now has a safe place to store the medicine she
— Biva Rajbhandari came to Bread for the City to work for one year in our social services program through the Lutheran Volunteer Corps Program.
Sixty-one people were honored at this year’s Client Achievement Award Ceremony at Bread for the City. Together, we celebrated the goals our community members had reached — ranging from finding jobs they love to securing stable housing.
Great job, achievers! You’re the reason we love what we do.
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Gingerbread for the City
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oliday Helpings is just around the corner! It’s our annual tradition to ensure that families in need across the District can enjoy a holiday meal — a turkey and all the trimmings — at their own dinner tables. Bread for the City is able to offer holiday meals to hungry households every year because of the support of generous folks like you. Last year, almost 100 people started their own holiday fundraising drives for Holiday Helpings, and some of you got pretty creative. Take our neighbors, Sebastian and Tait, for example: These two philanthropic DC transplants put together a holiday drive that was deliciously fruitful! For every $500 they raised, they added a room to their homemade gingerbread house. In the end, they raised more than $4,000 and helped us provide holiday meals to about 140 families across DC! According to Sebastian, “It was very important for us to plant a stake in the ground – to say that if we are going to move into this community and stay for a while, we are also going to do something to make it better for the people who are already here.” So they came up with an idea that could keep their friends and neighbors engaged while raising important conversations and funds for poverty relief efforts at Bread for the City. “Tait assembled a table full of gingerbread panels, icing, Skittles, screwdrivers, hacksaws, and other assorted implements of construction, and got to work.” Sebastian reflects, “It helped that [our roommate] Chris is an engineer, though we’re not sure that structure was exactly up to code.” “The outpouring of support was overwhelming,” Sebastian shared. More
Make an in-kind gift by donating food, clothing, or an item from our Amazon Wish List See our Wish List at Amzn.to/BFCWish
Here are some of our most-needed items: ✔ Children’s books, especially in Spanish ✔ Cleaning supplies/ laundry detergent ✔ Gift cards for grocery stores and pharmacies ✔ Plus-sized clothing for men and women ✔ SmarTrip cards ✔ Toilet paper and other household items ✔ Thumb drives
This year, Holiday Helpings aims to provide full holiday meals to 8,000 hungry families!
than 60 of their friends, colleagues, neighbors, and relatives got involved with holiday gifts to their gingerbread house fundraiser last year. But beyond putting on a successful fundraiser, Sebastian and Tait said that they were pleased that they were able to start real conversations about hunger and income disparity in Washington, DC. “We’re glad that the drive started those conversations, and our aim really is to make sure that people continue to give generously, in terms of time and money, to Bread for the City long after the drive is over.”
Meet the people we’re helping at Bread for the City. Visit BreadfortheCity.org/ OurClients to see how we’re changing lives.
Want to follow the good example set by Sebastian and Tait? Start your own Holiday Helpings drive and see how many families you and your friends can feed! For details, please visit www.razoo.com/team/HolidayHelpings2013
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Addressing HIV/AIDS in Our Community
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ashington, DC has the highest rate of HIV infection — the virus that causes AIDS — in the United States. This has important implications for the District’s health care system as infected residents not only face chronic medical problems as they age, but also fight a disease that compromises their immune system. Bread for the City’s role as a medical home plays a vital role in the District’s drive to gain control of this epidemic. We provide HIV/AIDS education, condom distribution, and have incorporated HIV testing as part of our regular examinations. However, our needle exchange services also play a very important part.
Needle Exchange in Our Medical Home Having access to clean needles and quality primary care can be the difference between knowing your HIV status and living in ignorance of your status while potentially infecting others. Bread for the City’s Needle Exchange Program (NEX) is embedded right in our medical clinic
so that we can ensure there are no barriers to providing this service. NEX participants can visit our clinic without appointment and receive sterile needles in a “no questions asked” environment. In addition to syringes, we offer participants on-the-spot HIV and Hepatitis C testing, referrals to drug rehabilitation and detox programs, and general primary care. Naloxone kits (a drug used to counter the effects of overdose) are also made available. Of course, NEX participants are also asked at each visit if they would like an HIV test. We discuss their risk factors for HIV/AIDS and how they can protect themselves against the disease, encouraging them to consider frequent re-testing for HIV/AIDS as well as enrollment in a detox/substance abuse program. Finally, we strongly encourage those who test HIV+ to provide us with their partner history so that we may forward the information on to the DC Department of Health for immediate partner notification. In our “medical home,” we develop comprehensive relationships with patients centered on and tailored to the
whole patient and their families to assure quality and safety of care. Our focus is on prevention and communication as well as treatment. We coordinate among specialists and with Bread for the City’s other programs to help connect families in need with other resources and services to promote their overall well-being. — Obi Nnebedum came to Bread for the City through the DC Primary Care Association and AmeriCorps Community HealthCorps program.
Bread for the City’s Needle Exchange Program is fully funded by the DC Department of Health’s HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis, STD, and Tuberculosis Administration.
Want to read more about the needle exchange program at Bread for the City? Visit our blog at BreadfortheCity.org/Blog and type needle exchange into the search box.
Stay Connected to Bread for the City! We live tweet all of our major events, and we love tweeting with our supporters! r with ed? Voluntee s to get involv ay g w r or y. he it ot r ec Looking fo breadforth g volunteer@ us by contactin
The best way to support our work is through a monetary contribution to Bread for the City. 4
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