A tan Thor A.C.E. motorhome was parked inside one of the garage bays at Mission Mobile Medical in Greensboro.
The previous owner had used the recreational vehicle for camping, but it’s now in the process of being transformed into a mobile health unit for the UNC Greensboro School of Nursing.
It already has a name – Minerva’s Mobile Health in honor of the Roman goddess of wisdom and women’s arts who has become a symbol for UNCG.
Mission Mobile Medical, a Greensboro-based mobile health clinic manufacturer, is retrofitting the interior of the motorhome for the School of Nursing. A team of carpenters, electricians, fabricators, and technicians will convert the RV into a mobile clinic in less than 150 days.
When it’s finished, Minerva’s Mobile Health will include an exam room, a waiting area for patients, a bathroom, and a wheelchair lift for anyone with mobility challenges.
It will also have UNCG-themed, blue-and-gold vinyl graphics covering its exterior, making the mobile health unit easy to spot as it heads down the highway or is parked while providing services.
“It’s about providing access, which involves taking services to people in our communities, and concurrently educating our nursing students to serve those most in need of health care,” said Debra J. Barksdale, PhD, dean of the School of Nursing.
Thanks to a four-year, $3.7 million grant from the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration, the School of Nursing is partnering with Cone Health to soon roll out Minerva’s Mobile Health, which will benefit students and help medically underserved populations around central North Carolina get access to health care.
Students in UNCG’s bachelor of science in nursing program, as well as nurse practitioner students, will get clinical experiences in the mobile health unit and at pop-up clinics eventually in six counties – Alamance, Caswell, Forsyth, Guilford, Randolph, and Rockingham.
“Minerva’s Mobile Health will bring health care to the people in the most need and provide experiences for nursing students in community health caring for persons where they live and work with a focus on social determinants of health and helping persons achieve their health and wellness goals,” said Audrey Snyder, PhD, the School of Nursing’s associate dean for experiential learning and innovation.
The School of Nursing’s partnership with Cone Health is innovative in that it will use data science to predict the locations of populations in rural and underserved communities in The Piedmont that are most in need for health care services. The mobile health unit will head to those communities.
The School of Nursing is expected to unveil Minerva’s Mobile Health sometime this summer.
“When I first heard that UNCG had chosen to partner with Mission Mobile Medical to serve those most in need of medical care in our local community, I was over the moon,” said Joshua Chancey, a project leader for Mission Mobile Medical who earned a bachelor’s degree in marketing from UNCG in 2011 and then an MBA in 2020. “It’s not every day that one gets to work with their alma mater.”
Story and photography by Alex Abrams, School of Nursing
