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News 12 Staff

315spotlightnj2_2025-03-15-09-18-28

We are joined by Doctor Carrie Powell. She's president and chief executive officer of the Neighborhood Health Center. First, let's talk about this logo you designed. It's beautiful. Oh, and, and thank you for commenting. We put a lot of work and effort in designing this logo and everything has meaning. We wanted to give a home because we wanted to know that neighborhood is your medical home and we take care of the entire family. And we also used and we picked the colors were specifically picked for their um for their warmth for things about uh good health so all of that is um designed on purpose and the heart is right in the center of the stethoscope also because we are we we are giving like warmth and we're treating the whole person and the spirit of the person so for for neighborhood health we we try to. To comprehensively take care of our patients. It's not just about a visit it's about taking care of the entire person and that drove us to um have this uh logo here. You just opened, as we talked about at the end of the first segment, a special service for women, a special machine that you now have. Well, we're gonna be, um, it should be opening soon, but we're working to get a 3D mammography, um, a mammogram machine on site. So we're close to opening that up. We just opened our full ultrasound suite which we can get full um ultrasound services. So when we are fully, um, when it's fully opened, we'll be able to get a 3D mammogram machine. And also you would all be able to get a breast ultrasound along with that along with other um ultrasound services and cervical cancer screenings which we have video. Tell us about that. So um for neighborhood we we we we screened for all cancer screenings so for women's health and for cervical Cancer Month, we did a fair where we um educated women about cervical cancer and get. The Pap smears which you should get your mammogram um Pap smears with your GYN and so we we always put tables out so that we could reach out to the community so they can understand what they should be, um, how they should be taking care of themselves and as women for us to get cervical cancer screenings and also for us to get mammogram screenings and so these are just part of what we do on a regular basis is to make sure we um outreach to the community.

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315spotlightnj3_2025-03-15-12-21-17

You're looking at video of give kids a smile day with the Neighborhood Health Center. Doctor Carrie Powell will tell us exactly what we're looking at. Uh, this is one of the, the 11 of the events that we are so proud of. We host this event annually where we provide, uh, free screenings, dental screenings to the the children in our community. So anyone that signs up can have their children's teeth screened and if they need to be cared for, of course we are, we have a full dental department. That then enrolls them in the department to provides the services they need so it's, it is a um something that we are very proud of and everybody volunteers to screen the the children during that day and also my staff in the community we all come together to make sure the children have their dental screenings. Do you find a lot of families and kids take advantage of this? Oh absolutely we are full every year and it looks like it gets bigger and bigger and during that time we also take take um. Advantage of letting the family know about health care and also exposing even the adults to dental um care because a lot of times when you don't have insurance the last thing you think of taking care of is your dental health and oral health is the beginning of the entire body's health so we um are definitely use these events to capture families to be able to bring them in to take care of them and screen them as much as possible and then enroll them in if they do not have a medical home enroll them into the health center to take care of them. And as we said, she is Doctor Carrie Powell. She's the president and chief executive officer with the Neighborhood Health Center. Remind people where your centers are. Um, absolutely our main center is in Plainfield. We are on 1700 Myrtle Avenue in Plainfield, New Jersey. We also have a second site in Elizabeth, New Jersey. At 1841st Street and we're on the 2nd floor in Elizabeth and we have a school-based site that's the Cardinal Health Place and that is on Plainfield High School's parking lot and we provide school-based services as well and we have another school service that is in the middle school in Plainfield as well.

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316spotlightnj4_2025-03-16-09-13-58

We are talking about the Neighborhood Health Center here on Spotlight, New Jersey. Doctor Cary Powell is president and chief executive officer. You all started out as a well-baby clinic, absolutely, and it was a community-based effort. They started a well baby clinic to um address the high um mortality infant mortality rate, maternal and infant mortality rate back in 1969, and it was on a storefront on Front Street in Plainfields and the community got together to address the need. That they saw in the community and from there it grew and we then became a federally qualified health center because the need of the community just grew and grew so we started offering more and more services and we applied to be a federally qualified health center so that we could expand services to all of Union County. So, and from there, um, even more amazing is that the board members and a lot of the community got together raised funds to build a brand new state of the art 22 22,000 square feet facility that is now on Myrtle Avenue. So it's an amazing story of how the community got together to see what their needs were and they addressed their needs and that's where we've, we're coming from there to now where we're seeing such a a big expansion of these services for the community. Let's talk about the video we have right now too of what you all offer. So this, you know, a lot, again, we, we talk about how a lot of people do not know what services are available. So again, we go and we partner with a lot of community-based um partners to just um let them know what we're doing so. We bring out our podiatry services because I didn't uh mention that before so we bring out a podiatrist we bring out our outreach workers and our community health workers to go into communities that we we give health screenings. So this is an example of where we're going out into community and actually screening um people right on site where they are screening for blood pressure for diabetes uh for weight. And then we um again if we a lot of times people are walking around not realizing that they um have these issues and so we can identify them and we can also take care of them and direct them to for health care and but I think this is an important part of what we do and so these are just videos of us going out into community and and letting let people know what we're doing.

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316spotlightnj5_2025-03-16-09-20-35

I'm sitting here with Doctor Carrie Powell, who is president and chief executive officer of the Neighborhood Health Center in Union County. She's also a pediatrician. Uh, yes, absolutely, and actually I wanted to be a pediatrician since I was 7 years old and so I, you know, decided that I wanted to be a pediatrician and I started doing everything I needed to do to achieve that goal so I'm very passionate about providing health care to children for sure. Sure why that medical specialty for you why kids you know it's where you can affect change in someone's life and not to say that once you're older that you know there's nothing you can do, but I am always marveled about about children and how you can you can come into their lives and make a difference and change the trajectory of their lives so I've always loved working with with children absolutely and being able to heal them. And a lot of people will say, well, how can you deal with them when they're sick and isn't that sad? I take it another way and say I would love to be that person to be there to help them and bring them through it, provide compassion and care for them to get through those hard times. You also change people's lives with the community food bank. Tell us about that. So we, we, we, we are honored to look at the whole person and all the person's needs. So food, um, insecurity is a big deal and how can we expect that our patients are healthy if they do not have access to healthy food? So we applied and we were accepted to be a community food bank of New Jersey site. So every 4th Tuesday, every 4th Tuesday we have, um, in Plainfield we have the um the the food bank delivery so you can come from 11 to 2 and if you need food please, please come down and get it and you can call the health center at any time and we could access, you know, give you access to food, but that is part of. Our mission is to treat the whole individual. Can you use donations for your food bank? Absolutely. We need volunteers and donations for the food bank. We actually need donations for a lot of the the things that we like to do because we want to expand providing services. So one of our goals is to raise money for a mobile health unit. So that we can we can take um integrated primary care services out into the community so we are definitely um looking to raise funds for us to expand the services that we're able to provide to the community and if you would like to donate, you can go to our website www.nhscNJ.org.

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316spotlightnj6_2025-03-16-12-54-59

Hello, my name is uh Doctor Carrie Powell. I'm president and CEO of Neighborhood Health Services Corporation located in Plainfield, Elizabeth, and in servicing Union County, and we are, I'm happy to talk about the, um, Santa event that we have that looks like a lot of fun. Oh, it is a lot of fun. Um, so Santa visits our health center every year and we give out toys to our community, both our patients and to the children in the community as well, so they can come take pictures, meet with Santa, and again, nothing, nothing is healthier than giving a child a smile and so giving out those toys and then having them be able to interact with Santa it just puts a good smile on everyone's face and the employee. as well, do a lot of partners come together to help you with the toys that you give out as the gifts? Absolutely. We've had donations from the hospital systems, veterans groups that have given us toys. So, uh, um, we are, um, blessed that they have been giving us, uh, toys every year for us to be able to give out to the community. So we are always looking for donations of toys annually for the the. Christmas, uh, time do you take them all year or right around the holiday itself? We can take them all year long, um, so it's right, you know, it's, it's, it's a peak around the holidays, but if at any point you wanted to donate toys, please feel free to, um, reach out to us and we'll definitely set up the, um, toy delivery. Doctor Powell, what kind of help can you use to sustain your center and keep it going? Um, funding, funding, funding, you know, so a lot of times we rely heavily on getting grants. We, um, hi, uh, rely on volunteers and donations and so, and, and it's so in addition to the federal funding that we get, we rely heavily on those to supplement what we do and the, you know, we, we were able to provide services in a very cost effective way. Um, but we are also, uh, definitely need the, the funds and we were able to like one of the things I'm doing is trying to renovate the health center, so the health center was built in 1996 and it's in, um, need of renovation, so I was able to renovate some parts of it, but I'd like to get the OBGYN department renovated. So that we can also expand those services for women's health and also dental services so we're looking to expand and get um some funding in to be able to achieve those goals.

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President and CEO Dr. Kerri Powell joined News 12’s Della Crews to discuss their mission.

Spotlight New Jersey: Neighborhood Health Center

President and CEO Dr. Kerri Powell joined News 12’s Della Crews to discuss their mission.

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