Prisma Community Care brings healthcare to rural areas with a new mobile clinic
Updated: 2 days ago
By Mira Preston
Prisma Community Care (Prisma) will be unveiling a new Mobile Health Unit (MHU) in October to better meet the needs of rural, tribal, and underserved communities across Arizona. The MHU will bring Prisma’s integrated healthcare services directly into communities, providing HIV/STI testing and treatment, PrEP services, behavioral health services, and comprehensive clinical care. The MHU will also connect patients with ongoing healthcare and supportive resources, including care navigation, referrals, and assistance with enrollment in AHCCS, Arizona’s Medicaid program.
By bringing these services directly to communities, Prisma aims to reduce barriers to care and expand access to high-quality, affirming healthcare throughout Arizona.
Prisma has been operating in Central Phoenix for over 30 years, and is “one of the oldest, most well-established LGBTQ+ health centers in Phoenix,” according to Jessyca Leach, CEO of Prisma Community Care. In the years since it opened, it has expanded its services to include primary care, mental health services, HIV and STI testing, HIV prevention and management, and reproductive care, and the MHU will help bring these services to Arizonans across the state.
“We have to meet people where they’re at,” said Iris Avila, Senior Director of Marketing and Community Relations. “So asking them to come to us is not the best approach. But the Mobile Health Unit is allowing us to meet individuals in their communities, locations where they already feel safe and there’s already trust established with other organizations.”
According to the Arizona Department of Health Services (AZDHS), there are currently almost 20,000 people in Arizona living with HIV, a virus that attacks the immune system and eventually develops into AIDS without treatment. Once HIV has progressed to AIDS, life expectancy drops to an average of three years.
Those in tribal and rural communities face additional barriers to treatment, including stigma, excessive commute times to treatment facilities, lack of insurance coverage, and a lower rate of primary care physicians per 100,000 residents. Incidence rates of HIV are higher in rural Arizonan communities, with the highest rates in the Apache and Pinal counties, according to the AZDHS, and diagnoses have been climbing since 2020.
Prisma is partnered with a number of organizations, including pharmacies around the state, Telehealth organizations, and the Hualapai tribe in northwestern Arizona. These partnerships allow them to more effectively build trust with rural and tribal communities and help combat stigma and fear that act as obstacles to obtaining care.
A Community Health Worker will provide education, health assessments, and connection to supportive services in order to effectively target the roadblocks that make accessing care difficult in these regions, such as housing and food insecurity.
According to Casey Simon, Chief Clinical Programs Officer, in Maricopa County only 11% of those who are eligible for PrEP — a preventative medication that reduces the risk of getting HIV by up to 99% — are currently taking it.
“We’ve come such a long way in treatment for HIV that it’s really a well-controlled condition now, as long as you keep up with your medication,” said Emily Snyder, Director of Clinical Services. “But if you can’t get to your doctor, that really eliminates a lot of that. I have a lot of patients in Northern Arizona, and it’s hard for them to come down here. And when we miss those appointments and those check-ins, other things start to fall to the wayside.”
“Having the mobile unit will be really great because we can meet those patients where they are.”
To learn more about Prisma Communtiy Care, visit PrismaCare.org
Image courtesy of Prisma Community Care.
