Ministry reaches uninsured

DALTON, Ga. -- When Angeles Velazquez and her family moved to the United States from Mexico, they couldn't continue their dental care, including follow-up treatment for the braces they were wearing.

"No one wanted to treat us because they couldn't continue a previous treatment from Mexico and we couldn't afford to start all over again," said Mrs. Velazquez. "I remember we removed the braces with a spoon, one by one."

On a recent afternoon, Dr. Wiley Smith, with the newly formed Grace Presbyterian Medial Outreach Ministry, visited the family and checked their heart rates and blood pressure and recorded their medical histories -- their first doctor's visit in several years.

"Our church has an interest in doing outreach to our local community," said Dr. Smith, a retired Army doctor and missionary from Alabama. "We already have several kinds of programs where we go out and help people with their housing, educational programs .... and what we found is that there's a lot of people in the community here having a lot of trouble with their health care."

Although Dr. Smith is not a dentist, he will help the family with their primary health care and direct them to other doctors to get treatment for specific problems.

With the home visits, Dr. Smith said he wants to establish a relationship with his patients and be able to detect other problems they might be having, either spiritually or in their living circumstances.

The ministry started about two months ago, and Dr. Smith said he has 15 active patients and about 25 families who want to be in the program, which focuses on people who lack insurance and don't qualify for any other type of aid.

"It is truly a blessing," said Mrs. Velazquez, who is 10 weeks pregnant and just visited a doctor for her pregnancy because she's uninsured and can't afford the costs of the appointments, exams and labor fees.

About 46 million people nationwide are uninsured, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan private foundation focused on health care.

About 25 percent of the uninsured go without needed medical care each year because of the cost, compared with about 10 percent of those with such public coverage as Medicare or TennCare and 4 percent with private coverage, said Karyn Schwartz, a senior policy analyst with the foundation.

"Most of the uninsured are in working families, but often the employers don't offer health insurance," she said. "They tend to work in smaller firms."

That is the case of the Velazquez family, where Mrs. Velazquez's husband, Juan, works in a restaurant but insurance isn't offered because of the cost.

Her sister-in-law, Irene Velazquez, also works part time in a restaurant and her sister, Monica Robles, works a couple of days a week in a factory. None of them have health insurance.

The whole family goes to Grace Presbyterian Church, where they found out about the church's medical outreach program.

"The fact that the doctor comes to our house for free is a great advantage," said Mr. Velazquez.

"And we feel safe because it's someone we trust," added Angeles Velazquez.

The program's goal, Dr. Smith said, is to "eventually get them to a stage where they can enter the greater medical system."

"And for people of faith, this is one avenue we can use to minister," he added.

Dr. Smith said he also would like to form alliances with the local medical community to reach more people.

"I'm a family physician so I can't take care of every problem, if someone has a lot of complications I need to call a specialist to help me out," he said. "So we try to make friends with those doctors, if someone has special needs and doesn't have the finances to pay, we try to find the right doctor who can take care of them."