The Common Ground Community Health Clinic in New Orleans opened a few weeks after Hurricane Katrina hit and today, the mainly volunteer staff provide free care to anyone who needs it, often 40 or 50 people a day. Decreasing barriers to health care is one of the main goals, as the shattered health care system is one of the roadblocks to the city’s recovery.

Hurricane Katrina displaced hundreds of doctors and nurses, and four of the city’s seven general hospitals no longer function. Combined with the fact that being out of work also often means lacking health insurance in the US, the outlook for health care in New Orleans is quite sobering.

However, the Common Ground volunteer medical staff and others look at this virtual absence of a health care system as an opportunity to create something newer and better.

They provide basic preventative care and see the community health clinic as able to offer more personalized service that a hospital system alone cannot. With little federal funding and a large city around them, Common Ground workers realize they can’t serve the whole city but they hope to make the change they want to see in their neighborhood and others will follow suit.

You can find out more at the Common Ground website, including information on volunteering; also watch a video from the New York Times about “the little clinic that could”.