According to its website, for the past 25 years, NAM's Pediatric Health Center has been offering a full range of medical care services to children of all ages across the nonprofit's 660-square-mile service area of northwest Harris County. Through its partnership with The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, the nonprofit is able to offer services to children in need regardless of medical insurance status, ranging from wellness checks and preventive health care to immunizations and management of chronic illness.
According to Carr, the majority of funding for Pediatric Health Center programming comes from foundation grants. However, Carr said some of these foundations have recently changed their philanthropic priorities, meaning the center's funding is drying up.
"Over the last year, we've been notified by many of the funders that have been supporting the health center that they're changing their funding—they have new funding priorities—which happens from time to time," Carr said in a March 9 interview. "The boards meet and choose to [support] education or climate change or whatever they want to fund, and because of that, they are no longer going to be funding our Pediatric Health Center or any programs similar to that."
As a result, Carr said center programs that cannot be billed through Medicare or Medicaid, such as healthy-eating classes, behavioral health programs and respiratory therapy sessions for clients with asthma, are now in jeopardy of being cut.
"The well checks, the normal patient-and-doctor visits are not what we're worried about, but it's these extra programs that a lot of our clients have come to depend on that we are concerned about," Carr said. "We're really needing to raise about another $150,000 between now and the summer to be able to commit to all of our programs going [for] the rest of the year."
According to Carr, some of these programs are more important now than ever due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and subsequent economic downturn.
"The overall well-being of the children in the area has taken a hit, not just because of coronavirus itself, but the economic downturn that followed and that has had a real detrimental effect on families and children," Carr said. "We're seeing more families that need the pediatric health center here at NAM because their income has been affected; their home economic has been turned upside down. So having a clinic where they can come in—whether they have insurance or not, whether they're on Medicaid or not, [there are] no questions about their legal residency—that's just one less thing for the family to have to worry about during this really scary time."
To help keep these programs afloat for the remainder of 2021, Carr said the community can help by making financial contributions of any amount to the nonprofit. To support NAM's Pediatric Health Center, click here or call 281-885-4555. Donations may also be sent to NAM's facility located at 15555 Kuykendahl Road, Houston.
