BRAZOS COUNTY, Texas — HealthPoint was among 46 grantees awarded money from a $23 million plan from the U.S Department of Health and Human Services to develop teaching health center residency programs in community based settings.
“We’re really excited to be partnering with Sam Houston State University, their school of osteopathic medicine in developing this," explained HealthPoint CEO Terri Sabella. "We’re gonna focus on our Navasota location; we have a brand new building out in Navasota. It has not only primary care services but behavioral health services and dental and so we think it’s a great place to focus this training.”
With this new grant, HealthPoint will be able to train primary care physicians how to serve rural communities in need.
“The residents would rotate in our clinics with the idea that we’re trying to train medical residents that will ultimately return to those rural areas. We know its so difficult to recruit physicians to rural communities and we feel like having these residency programs will encourage folks teach them the way of life in our rural communities and how appealing it is,” says Sabella.
HealthPoint has been an essential resource for many uninsured residents in the Brazos Valley and wants the community to be in good hands in the future.
The importance of a healthy relationship between physicians and their patients is an incredibly significant be more important to HealthPoint, according to Sabella.
“Particularly when you're serving an at-risk population, that is not for everyone. But for some people it's what is in their heart. It is the mission so creating environments where they can train and develop their skill set in those communities, you can really hone in on the folks that have the heart for the mission and those are the ones who are going to take the best care of our friends and neighbors in our communities,” she said.