Below is a transcript of our conversation with Kathleen Hodgkins, Director of Clinical Services, CMU’s CARLS Center for Clinical Care and Education
David Nicholas:
I'm David Nicholas, and this is Central Focus, a weekly look at research activity and innovative work from Central Michigan University students and faculty. Mobile Health Central has been around a little over 10 years, bringing health care services to rural parts of Michigan. Kathleen Hodgkins is Director of Clinical Services in CMU's CARLS Center for Clinical Care and Education. She sat down with me so I could learn more, and she brought along news of secured additional funding for the project…
I guess where I wanted to start, Kate, and this seems kind of basic, but a lot of people may not be as familiar, just a brief overview of what Mobile Health Central is and what services it provides.
Kathleen Hodgkins:
Yeah, so the Mobile Health Unit is the 35 or 39 foot RV unit that provides a wide range of health services on the road, right? And so, we can do kind of your basic health screens, blood pressure, vitals checks, things like that. And we can even do sports physicals, wound care, interesting gamut of health screenings on our mobile unit.
DN:
When it goes out on the road, you mentioned before we formally sat down, rolled tape, that a lot of times the stops are at a high school. When that schedule is being set up, is there an attempt to get it kind of on a regional basis? Or do you hear from communities or other departments of community health and so forth saying, we have a real need, can you come here? How is that schedule put together?
KH:
Yeah, so previously we've reached out to high schools to schedule those sports physicals. What's nice is that the unit goes right to the schools. And so, lots of the high school athletes are already at the school. And so, it's not an extra appointment for families to have to navigate. They're not having to take off work to drive to the appointment, you know, things like that. And so, we're usually able to do, I don't know, anywhere between 20 to 50, maybe sports physicals, wherever the need is. Typically, the school does do all the coordinating of that appointments, of the appointments that are scheduled. It has been around mid-Michigan, I would say, for the most part. I previously mentioned to you, we did just get a grant through the Towsley Foundation. It's A $75,000 grant over the next three years. And so, this first year, we are focusing on sports physicals, and we're hopefully going to be able to provide free sports physicals this first year with the first $25,000. So, we're very excited about that.
DN:
Imagining that a lot of the students are getting very practical experience, but how, what's the typical team size look like?
KH:
Yeah, so the mobile health unit is a team effort. So, it recently came under the Carl Center for Clinical Care and Education's umbrella, if you will. You know, I'm the director of clinical services there, so I guess I would be the point person for the mobile health care unit. And then when it goes out on the road, we of course have our driver and then we have two or three providers. So, they're typically our faculty who are also clinicians. And then each faculty maybe will oversee two to three students. And so, it depends on the need. If it's a health fair we're going to, it's going to depend on what the service they're wanting. So, if we're just doing kind of blood pressure checks or body composition, we might just have two providers with (with) maybe four students.
DN:
And then through some grant funding, that the reach and the access is now going to be greatly enhanced due to the setup with a unit of satellite internet. What can you tell us about that whole initiative and how it will, how long will it take to get that all hooked up? And then where do you think you'll be able to reach?
KH:
Yeah, so it was a great surprise when John from the Rural Health Excellence Institute reached out and said that he might be able to help us get satellite internet for the mobile health unit. And we talked a little bit about what that meant for the mobile unit. We current, we had Wi-Fi, which has been great, but you know, Wi-Fi can be unstable at times when we're getting weather like we're having right now, for example. And so basically, the best quote he gave me was, “as long as we have clear view of the sky, internet access should be available” to support telehealth and electronic record and even future AI tools.
DN:
We will learn more about the present and future of Mobile Health Central in an upcoming segment of Central Focus. I'm David Nicholas. Thank you, as always, for joining me.
