OSF HealthCare will debuting their mobile health center Care-A-Van during the Friday April 1st Hop Downtown Family Easter Event in Downtown Danville. Speaking with us outside OSF Sacred Heart Medical Center, OSF Vice-President of Ancillary Services Jennifer Compton stated the April 1st event will be a great place for residents to get to know the new Care-A-Van.
AUDIO: It’ll be a big night. It’ll be a lot of fun for the kids. And we’re excited to give away some candy, and just really give some tours of the Care-A-Van, and talk about the blessing it has been to us at Sacred Heart to have this as part of our tool kit.
The OSF HealthCare Care-A-Van has two exam rooms, which can both be used for medical, dental, or educational purposes.
Debbie Michenfelder, Ministry Major Gifts Officer for OSF, says the person who can first and foremost be thanked for this project, would be very happy, as they’ve been working on it for about three years.
AUDIO: That would be the Julius W. Hegeler II Foundation. Julius was a fantastic philanthropist for the Vermilion County – Danville area. So we need to thank them for this generous donation to make this possible. The COVID/2020 kind of set us back a little bit. But I’ll tell you what, after 2020 we got right on board and got this ordered and here it is now. And so I’m sure Julius is looking down and smiling.
OSF Manager of Community Resource Centers Jacob Ozier says the versatility of the Care-A-Van will definitely be a strength.
AUDIO: So the clinical side of it; we can do checkups, we can do physicals, we can do vaccinations, all sorts of things. But we also, the exciting part, is we have two dental carts on there. So we can have a dentist go out and do those dental hygiene and dental checks as well. And then we see it as educational. We have a TV on the outside; we can give a food prep class on how to cook cheap and healthy. So we can do some educational pieces as well.
OSF HealthCare continues to look for assistance in staffing the Care-A-Van; seeking interested parties from retired medical professionals to medical students needing credit and experience.
