The Wright Center for Community Health will join with similar organizations and advocates across the United States next week in marking National Health Center Week, Aug. 7-13.

The observance provides an opportunity for the nation’s Community Health Centers to raise public awareness about the vital role they play in delivering affordable, nondiscriminatory health care to communities in need, including rural, high-poverty and other historically underserved areas.

Health centers provide comprehensive care to nearly 30 million patients at about 11,000 sites located across every U.S. state and territory. Collectively, these health centers save the nation’s taxpayers more than $24 billion each year through the prevention of emergency, hospital and specialty-care costs.

Other events to be held as part of The Wright Center’s observance of National Health Center Week:

• Driving Better Health appearance at the New Roots Heartwood Center, 100 S. Wyoming St., Hazleton, with COVID-19 vaccination and testing clinic from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., Monday, Aug. 8. The Heartwood Center is a provider of homeless and recovery support services.
• Food bag distribution at The Wright Center for Community Health Kingston Practice, 2 Sharpe St., Kingston, from noon to 2 p.m. on Wednesday, Aug. 10, while supplies last. The limited number of free bags will be given on a first-come, first-served basis.
• Children’s Health Day activities to be held in conjunction with the weekly South Side Farmers Market, 526 Cedar Ave., Scranton, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 13. The Wright Center for Patient & Community Engagement will offer COVID-19 test kits, a limited number of free school backpacks and children’s art activities.
• COVID-19 vaccination and testing clinic with Driving Better Health vehicle at the newly opened Keystone Mission Transformation Center, 290 Parkview Circle, Wilkes-Barre, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Monday, Aug. 15. The clinic will be open to clients of the Keystone Mission program that serves homeless men as well as to the broader public, including residents of the neighborhood’s nearby public housing complexes.

For more information about The Wright Center’s National Health Center Week activities and other public events, visit its online calendar at TheWrightCenter.org/events.

The Wright Center for Patient & Community Engagement, in collaboration with Lackawanna College, is relocating the “Road to Recovery” Car Show on Saturday, Aug. 6 from Lackawanna College to Nay Aug Park, 500 Arthur Ave., Scranton, due to water damage on the college campus. 

Registration, which costs $10 per vehicle and $5 per motorcycle, begins at 8 a.m., with the show operating from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. The “Road to Recovery” Car Show will be located on the stage immediately past the pool area at the summer concert venue at Nay Aug Park. Participants are asked to enter at the Olive Street side of the park in front of the pool area. 

The family-friendly fundraiser also features prizes, music, raffles, food trucks, games and more. Proceeds from the program are used to offset transportation costs for patients of The Wright Center for Community Health’s Opioid Use Disorder Center of Excellence. For more information, contact Kara Seitzinger, director of public affairs/advisor liaison to the president and CEO at The Wright Center, at seitzingerk@thewrightcenter.org or 570.591.5170.

Pennsylvania designated The Wright Center for Community Health as an Opioid Use Disorder Center of Excellence in 2017 – one of 50 in the state. The program helps individuals in recovery reshape their lifestyles from the comfort of their own communities. Patients visit any of The Wright Center’s primary care practices in Lackawanna, Luzerne or Wayne counties to connect with supportive certified recovery specialists, case managers, social workers and medical providers who collectively help them break the cycle of addiction through outpatient care. More information about the center and its addiction and recovery services is available at thewrightcenter.org/coe.

The Wright Center for Community Health’s Healthy Maternal Opiate Medical Support program, known simply as Healthy MOMS, is also linked to the Opioid Use Disorder Center of Excellence. Established in 2018, the program was co-founded with multiple agencies to assist women who are pregnant and have a substance use disorder. Healthy MOMS provides prenatal, perinatal and postpartum care, including medication-assisted treatment, to women coping with a substance use disorder. It strives to break stigma while building the self-esteem of participating mothers during and after their pregnancies, ideally engaging them in recovery support services for about two years. More information about the program is available at healthymoms.org.

The Wright Center for Community Health’s Driving Better Health mobile medical unit brings high-quality, nondiscriminatory, affordable health care services directly to the most vulnerable and medically underserved populations in Northeast Pennsylvania. Driving Better Health is offering routine vaccination clinics in August to ensure students are ready to return to school in the fall. For the most current list of vaccination clinics, go to TheWrightCenter.org/events.

The Wright Center for Community Health’s mobile medical unit is visiting numerous school districts and public parks in Lackawanna, Luzerne, Monroe, Pike and Wayne counties to ensure students receive the vaccines they need to return to school in the fall.

In August, the 34-foot mobile medical unit, known as Driving Better Health, will be providing routine vaccinations and COVID-19 testing, vaccinations and boosters at the following locations:

• Aug. 10: Hazleton Area School District, 1515 W. 23^rd St., Hazleton, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
• Aug. 11: Pocono Mountain School District, 231 Pocono Mountain School Road, Swiftwater, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
• Aug. 16: Dunmore School District, 300 W. Warren St., Dunmore, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
• Aug. 17: Riverside High School, 300 Davis St., Taylor, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
• Aug. 18: Heights Murray Elementary, 1 S. Sherman St., Wilkes-Barre, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
• Aug. 22: Middle Smithfield Elementary, 5180 Milford Road, East Stroudsburg, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
• Aug. 23: Wallenpaupack High School, 2552 U.S. Route 6, Hawley, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
• Aug. 23: Connors Park, 515 Orchard St., Scranton, 5-7 p.m.
• Aug. 25: Stroudsburg Area School District, 1100 W. Main St., Stroudsburg, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
• Aug. 25: Fellows Park, 1000 Fellows St., Scranton, 5-7 p.m.
• Aug. 31: Isaac Tripp Elementary School, 1000 N. Everett Ave., Scranton, 5-8 p.m.

Driving Better Health enables The Wright Center for Community Health to deliver high-quality, nondiscriminatory health care where patients live and work in Northeast Pennsylvania. COVID-19 vaccines and boosters are available for any child ages 5 and up. A guardian must accompany patients who are younger than 17. Walk-up appointments are welcome depending on vaccine availability, but appointments are encouraged for the convenience of patients. Please go to TheWrightCenter.org or call 570-230-0019 to schedule an appointment.

Guests are asked to observe public safety measures, including masking and social distancing, during the vaccination clinics and bring identification and insurance cards. 

The Wright Center for Community Health is a Federally Qualified Health Center Look-Alike. Community health centers offer affordable, safety-net health care services and are the largest providers of primary care for the nation’s most vulnerable and medically underserved populations. Prevalent in both urban and rural settings, community health centers are located in regions with high-poverty rates and/or low numbers of private or nonprofit health care systems and hospitals. 

Dr. Frederic N. Schwartz, who played a central role in the creation and success of The Wright Center’s Teaching Health Center Graduate Medical Education Safety Net Consortium’s multi-state National Family Medicine Residency, has been honored by his longtime employer in Arizona for his distinguished service to medical education.  

Dr. Schwartz, who retired in January 2022, was recently appointed as an emeritus faculty member by A.T. Still University School of Osteopathic Medicine in Arizona (ATSU-SOMA).

The honorary title recognizes Dr. Schwartz for his “years of dedication and service to this institution and the greater osteopathic medical education community,” said Dr. Sharon J. Obadia, interim dean of ATSU-SOMA.

Striving together to address America’s primary care physician shortage, misdistribution and related health disparities, ATSU-SOMA and The Wright Center collaboratively launched an innovative, pioneering National Family Medicine Residency in 2013, using a Teaching Health Center Graduate Medical Education Safety-Net Consortium model to prepare primary care physicians to serve and work in rural and other medically underserved communities. 

Currently, 51 resident physicians are enrolled in the National Family Medicine Residency, training at four national Federally Qualified Health Centers: El Rio in Arizona; HealthPoint in Washington; HealthSource in Ohio; and Unity Health in Washington, D.C.

Prior to his employment in Arizona, Dr. Schwartz worked in Maine, where he was a founder in the late 1970s of the University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine. He served as president of the Maine Osteopathic Association, receiving its Distinguished Service Award, and as the first osteopathic board member of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Maine.

He was later recruited to the Chicago College of Osteopathic Medicine, where he served as chairperson of Family Medicine and vice president for the Ambulatory Care Network, building the latter project into a network of 33 urban and rural community health centers. While operating the Midwestern University Ambulatory Care Network, he founded and served as president of the Southside Health Consortium of 11 hospitals and 60 community provider and resource agencies focused on care coordination and case management for the most at-risk and underserved residents.

Dr. Schwartz oversaw development of the clinical training network for Midwestern University’s new Arizona College of Osteopathic Medicine, moving to Arizona in 1994 to work with the new campus and programs. He received multiple student-choice clinical teaching awards.

In 2008, Dr. Schwartz joined ATSU-SOMA. Among other responsibilities there, he held the role of project director on multiple federal grants, stewarding funds to develop faculty, deploy distance-learning equipment, and enhance primary care undergraduate and graduate medical education to better prepare the primary care physician workforce of tomorrow that America needs. 

Clearly, Dr. Schwartz is a legend in medical education to be celebrated.

Board-certified family medicine physician Dr. Simin Nasr has joined The Wright Centers for Community Health and Graduate Medical Education, where she is training and educating the next generation of primary care providers and collaboratively treating patients of all ages as a preceptor alongside a high-quality empaneled care team of resident physicians.

Nasr is treating patients of all ages and precepting resident physicians who are providing primary and preventive care at The Wright Center for Community Health’s Scranton Practice, 501 S. Washington Ave., Scranton. To schedule an appointment with Nasr and a member of her resident physician team at the Scranton Practice, go to TheWrightCenter.org or call 570.230.0019. To find the most conveniently located community medical home, go to TheWrightCenter.org and click on patient care and primary care offices.

After immigrating to the United States, Nasr joined the Medical College of Wisconsin’s Family Medicine – All Saints Residency Program and developed a keen appreciation for working with older adult patients. She subsequently completed a Geriatric Medicine Fellowship at UPMC in Pittsburgh.

The Wright Center treats patients of all ages, income levels and insurance statuses at its primary care practices in Northeast Pennsylvania. Together, the primary and preventive care network offers access to high-quality, nondiscriminatory, affordable health services to patients regardless of their health insurance status or ability to pay. Certain patients may be eligible for the sliding-fee discount program based on family income and size.
The organization was designated a Federally Qualified Health Center Look-Alike in 2019. It offers integrated care, providing patients with the convenience of going to a single location to access medical, dental and behavioral health care, plus addiction treatment and other supportive services. The Wright Center for Graduate Medical Education is the nation’s largest medical education safety-net consortium that develops the physician workforce of tomorrow.

The Wright Center for Patient & Community Engagement and the Abington Community Library are presenting the three-day children’s camp, “A Day of Animals, Science and Literature,” at Indraloka Animal Sanctuary in Dalton on Aug. 16-18 from 8:45 a.m. to 3:15 p.m.

The following is the camp schedule:

• Tuesday, Aug. 16: “Healthy Me and Piggies” for students in grades K-4
• Wednesday, Aug. 17: “Happy, Healthy, Hopeful Heroes” for students in grades 5-8
• Thursday, Aug. 18: “Mammals, Medics and Manuscripts” for students in grades 9-12

The camp costs $25 per participant and includes lunch, but scholarships are available at the Abington Community Library. All children must be registered in advance on the Indraloka website at www.indrakola.org. 

Indraloka Animal Sanctuary is a private, charitable organization that provides “heaven on earth” for farm animals that have nowhere else to turn. Indraloka informs, inspires and empowers the community, especially children, on how to better care for themselves and the environment while helping animals in need. The organization advocates for a compassionate lifestyle that protects animals, the earth and an individual’s own health.

The Abington Community Library is part of the Lackawanna County Library System. The program is part of the PA Forward® Initiative promoting Healthy Literacy. Parents and guardians may apply for scholarships to the Indraloka camps at the library, 1200 W. Grove St., Clarks Summit or by calling 570-587-3440.

The Wright Center for Patient & Community Engagement (PCE) addresses the social determinants of health that affect patients of The Wright Center for Community Health and the overall regional community, including economic stability, education access, quality health care, and food and housing insecurity. PCE supports the most vulnerable individuals by providing food, clothing, transportation, special vouchers and more, while also ensuring children have the necessary supplies they need to successfully begin the school year.

For more information about PCE, contact Kara Seitzinger, director of public affairs/advisor liaison to the president and CEO, at seitzingerk@thewrightcenter.org.