How WeGo Public Transit fuels Neighborhood Health's mission of equity for the community

WeGo understands bus passes are essential medical supplies in Nashville. WeGo’s insight here reflects the importance of its work each and every day to get people to their doctors.

But WeGo’s efforts here matter more to you and your family than perhaps you realize:  Since March 2020, WeGo has done heroic work to keep us all healthy and help save Music City lives. Let me explain from the perspective of Neighborhood Health, Nashville’s largest and most diverse community health center.

Neighborhood Health makes an audaciously simple promise. If you have a pulse, you can be our patient at Neighborhood Health. You can use your medical or dental insurance here if you have it.  And we will make sure you can get the care you need even if you don’t have any insurance or the ability to pay. Our promise means people get care – and feel cared for.

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How Neighborhood Health is making medicine truly accessible

Our promise ensures everyone in Nashville can get care. Neighborhood Health is now the largest safety net provider of primary care in our region. We serve more African American patients and more Hispanic patients than all other health centers in our service area combined.  And we serve more women of reproductive age than all other health centers in Nashville put together.

Everyone means everyone. Neighborhood Health has two locations focused on public housing communities, two focused on immigrants and refugees, and one (soon to be two!) focused on rural residents. We also have two locations focused on persons experiencing homelessness – and a street medicine team that visits encampments across Davidson County 4-5 days each week. And we have locations from Madison to Lebanon to south Nashville and beyond, almost all of which are along public bus routes. We, with WeGo’s help, are making medical and dental care truly accessible.

Our promise forces us to think beyond the prescription pad.As Nashville hurriedly set up COVID testing operations in March and April 2020, the city opted for a vehicle-based option. This limited testing access to persons who did not have car keys or reliable access to a car, and it forced sick individuals to use public transportation to get to a test or go without.

Working closely with former At-Large Councilmember Bob Mendes, we partnered with WeGo to design a safe, accessible transportation program so all Nashvillians could get a test when they needed them. WeGo understood from the start that car keys should never be a prerequisite to health care.

As COVID vaccines became available in early 2021, Nashville again opted to set up vehicle-based vaccination locations and again, Nashvillians without car keys simply could not get to a vaccination center. Neighborhood Health advocated strongly to expand vaccination locations, and we partnered again with WeGo to ensure all Nashvillians, even those without car keys, could get vaccinated.

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Transportation plan keeps Nashville's unhoused residents warm during the winter

WeGo didn’t stop there. WeGo worked closely with Neighborhood Health on a transportation plan for winter shelter, which we worked with the Metro Homeless Impact Division to successfully implement in November 2021.

WeGo helped Metro replicate that success again in 2022 – and we continue to work hand-in-glove to ensure unsheltered Nashvillians at risk of exposure and hypothermia can get to a safe, warm place on the coldest nights. With the implementation of WeGo’s new bus route 79 serving Madison, WeGo ensures the patients seeking medical care at our largest clinic can do so using public transportation.

WeGo’s quiet work and unsung efforts make such a difference.We can never thank them enough. On behalf of the Neighborhood Health Board of Directors and our almost 30,000 patients, we celebrate WeGo’s invaluable contribution to health equity and inclusivity for everyone in Music City!

Brian Haile is the CEO of Neighborhood Health, private non-profit network of neighborhood health centers serving Nashville and Middle Tennessee.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Nashville's Neighborhood Health equity mission fueled by WeGo