Avicenna launches clinic staffed by Carle Illinois College of Medicine students

Jan. 31—CHAMPAIGN — Avicenna Community Health Center, based at the Champaign-Urbana Public Health District's building in Champaign, has opened a Women's Health Clinic offering a variety of services, including well-women's health check-ups and pap smears.

Just like the rest of Avicenna, the clinic's services are offered at no cost to patients who are uninsured and underinsured, and it offers opportunities for Carle Illinois College of Medicine students to get hands-on experience working behind the scenes and with patients.

Fourth-year medical student and clinic co-director Anessa Puskar said her managerial role has given her experiences that even acting physicians aren't often familiar with.

"When you're a provider, you show up to a clinic that's already fully stocked and you don't have to worry about, like, ordering labs," Puskar said. "But for us, it's like we need to think about 'OK, well, what supplies do you actually need to do a pap smear?'"

Since the Women's Health Clinic doesn't charge for services, funding comes from grants and donations.

Part of Puskar's role is applying for those grants, budgeting out exactly what the clinic can afford to offer and finding solutions.

For example, the students thought it was important to offer STD testing but didn't realize how expensive that was.

They met with the health district and made a plan to work together to provide testing.

Puskar said the clinic would also like to provide IUDs, which are an effective and long-lasting form of birth control, but that will be more difficult to set up because Avicenna doesn't currently do any procedures in house.

Right now, the Women's Health Clinic is only open about once a month, though the goal is to offer services more frequently as funding increases.

Volunteering is a significant commitment for the students involved.

"It's kind of like a part time job, I'd say," Puskar said. "At least 10 hours a week go into it, which can be a lot as a medical student."

When she isn't working on more administrative tasks, Puskar's role is more similar to that of a nurse, keeping patients in the loop about lab results and checking with the provider about treatment plans.

Other students do things like outreach, education or research on what more the clinic can offer.

One student's main job is just to track exactly what the Women's Health Clinic did for each patient and what each patient needed that the clinic can't provide. That way, they can see what is most needed among the client base.

If the clinic doesn't provide a service, students in case management help refer patients to somewhere that does.

Any actual medical decisions, down to details like medicine dosage, are checked over by Dr. Christine Chien (who graduated from the Urbana med school in 2023) or Dr. Ifeanyirochukwu Opoku, the clinic's OB-GYN physician.

"In terms of services we're currently offering, it's kind of maintenance gynecologic care," Puskar said.

That includes well-women's health check-ups, gynecological evaluations, family planning, breast exams, cervical-cancer screening, and testing and treatment for sexually transmitted infections and urinary-tract infections.

The Women's Health Clinic will next be open on Feb. 18. The full schedule, available at avicennahealth.org, includes one Sunday or Saturday each month through April.