Christian A. Ray, Intern - thefranklinpressnews@gmail.com
Vecinos held a ribbon cutting on May 6 for its new Community Health Hub in Franklin. Board members and employees of Vecinos were in attendance for the event and the emotion on display shows how much the team cares about the well-being of their community.
Vecinos began with providing services to farmworkers and day workers but now provides services to underrepresented groups in our community, as well as low-income or uninsured people.
Chief Executive Officer Marianne Martinez said, “This building is for Vecinos services, including primary care, behavioral health care and social health services. The beauty of this new building is that it is also a collaborative piece that helps serve the community.”
Martinez added, “The new building will allow patients to be treated holistically with multiple services all at once, with the driving knowledge that health care is not a privilege: it is a basic human right.”
Martinez has been the driving force in helping to raise and allocate funds for the new building. “It is still in progress, but the work that our operations team does and our proven history over the past 25 years makes it really easy for our funders to say, ‘We’ll buy into you.’ What we do is proven to be both effective and efficient as we are providing a service to the community that is imperative,” she said.
Derrick Hall, the director of Behavioral Health at Vecinos has been with the organization for a little more than seven months but has worked alongside them for more than four years when he worked with a Hispanic cooperative group. Hall said, “We have been at Western Carolina University and temporarily displaced from our normal offices, so it is absolutely incredible to have a new space to have individual rooms for therapy so that we can have consistent privacy and confidentiality for our patients.” Hall stressed the importance of this factor as it helps with patients’ vulnerability during treatment.
Hall also believes it is a great addition to have their providers right with them as part of the integrated care approach. “The mental health team can do screenings of all of the medical patients who are there to receive medical services. If there are any elevations in any of their mental health markers, we will be able to intervene and offer further counseling, consultations, and treatment.”
Hall said collaborating with other groups in their new space also will help provide other services for the community. “The ability to provide the broader community here and have places where people can have co-working spaces with our community partners to offer dental service or legal aid and many other services that individuals may need, we are really a one-stop show here now: come in the door and get all the help you need,” he said.
Kenny Parmenter, the lead mental health therapist said, “It’s going to be incredible what we can do. There is growth and advancement. It’s opening us up to more opportunities to serve people in the far western counties, which is a service that did not exist otherwise.”
Vecinos board member Dr. Theresa Cruz Paul said, “Vecinos has been working to support uninsured individuals for a long time, especially in the Latino community. This community health hub will bring together mental health, dental services, behavioral health, along with group classes and physical health with the doctors and nurses to create one central hub that can be a home base for them to work out of and serve the community.”
Mary Ann Farrell, a retired doctor from Cherokee Hospital who serves on the Vecinos board, said, “I think to have a physical home that is actually theirs is huge. I think one of the biggest things is that it will be collaborative with other organizations like Pisgah Legal and Mountain Projects. It brings everyone under the same roof. On the board we have expanded the mission of Vecinos, so now we are going to provide care to Macon County for uninsured individuals, which is a huge expansion from our original mission that mainly focused on farmworkers.”
The Community Health Hub is located at 19 Smoky Mountain Dr. off the Highway 441 Bypass. Hours are 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. To make an appointment, call 828-293-2274. For more information, visit vecinos.org.
In addition to Vecinos, the Community Health Hub houses Blue Ridge Free Dental Clinic, the 30th Judicial District Domestic Violence-Sexual Assault Alliance, Pisgah Legal Services, WNC Alliance, Mountain Projects and Centro Communitario of Macon County.