The Ohio Association of Free Clinics awarded Brenda Prince, DO, the 2011 Champion of Free Clinics on Tuesday, Oct. 11, at the 12th Annual Free Clinics Conference in Columbus. Dr. Prince played an integral part in the founding of the Tuscarawas Clinic for the Working Uninsured, a clinic providing medical care, pharmaceutical support and health education to the working adult, uninsured residents of Tuscarawas County.
In 2006, Prince, a long-time ER doctor, gathered key stakeholders in the local medical community to share her idea of creating a free clinic to serve those patients who were employed, but lacked medical coverage. Under her leadership, this group worked for four years to establish a mission, recruit medical professionals to volunteer their time, educate the medical community on the needs of a free clinic in the area, and develop the medical protocols needed to implement a successful clinic.
The Tuscarawas Clinic for the Working Uninsured opened its doors to their first patients in January 2009. Prince has volunteered for more than five years to develop and implement the clinic and continues to volunteer as the clinics medical director and serve as the clinics board president.
Dr. Princes deep passion to serve the uninsured came from consistently seeing her patients, who were working hard to provide for their family, but unable to afford insurance, utilizing emergency room physicians as their primary care providers. She knew these patients were not getting the needed medical follow-up, medication management or education about their chronic disease, said Jamie Orr, executive director of the Tuscarawas Clinic for the Working Uninsured. If it werent for Dr. Prince and her aggressive advocacy, our clinic would not have received the initial grant funding from local foundations or the respect of our community stakeholders to make her dream a reality.
The Ohio Association of Free Clinics (OAFC) created the Champion of Free Clinics Award in 2003 to honor individuals whose dedication to and achievements in serving the health care needs of the working poor and uninsured provide outstanding service and leadership models.
