'Help make a difference': Alabama State University expands health services to rural areas

With $750,000 in grant money, Alabama State University is reaching outside of Montgomery and into rural Alabama communities with its health services this month.

The university announced this week that its department of health services will provide “better healthcare services” to underserved residents in the Black Belt from now until Oct. 19. The efforts will focus on COVID testing, vaccinations and other care, according to ASU Health Services Center director Dr. Joyce Loyd-Davis.

“We will now be able to help make a difference within rural areas where residents have a hard time getting these specialized healthcare services,” Loyd-Davis said in a statement.

Alabama’s COVID case numbers are down to daily averages of 536 cases and five deaths, which is about where the state was in June 2020. Just over half of Alabama is fully vaccinated against COVID, and some of the counties with the highest vaccination rates are in the Black Belt.

So far, ASU has four testing and vaccination clinics planned for this month: one on Oct. 17 in Perry County, another on Oct. 19 in Elmore County and two at the ASU campus on Oct. 11 and Oct. 18.

ASU follows a string of other Alabama institutions that have begun initiatives to improve rural healthcare in the state.

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In October 2021, UA announced a $4 million project to build up health care support systems among the communities that COVID-19 has disproportionately impacted, and during that same year, the University of Alabama at Birmingham announced a $5 million cooperative agreement to improve rural health care systems.

University of Alabama Center for Economic Development director Nisa Miranda previously told the Advertiser that the recent surge in rural health funding was “long overdue.”

The grants awarded to ASU for its initiative come from the Alabama Pharmacy Association Alabama and the Alabama Department of Public Health. The university received $500,000 of the funds in 2021 and the rest earlier this year. Now, that money is being put to use.

The recent grant included an allocation for a new vehicle to get employees and equipment to the rural communities they plan to serve. Loyd-Davis called it their “COVID support vehicle.”

"It is important for ASU's Health Services to stay in the vanguard as a community and campus leader so it may do all it can do to help control and greatly reduce the COVID pandemic,” she said. “That is the ASU way.”

Hadley Hitson covers the rural South for the Montgomery Advertiser and Report for America. She can be reached at hhitson@gannett.com. To support her work, subscribe to the Advertiser or donate to Report for America.

This article originally appeared on Montgomery Advertiser: Alabama State University expands health services to the Black Belt