Girls My Own Age

During one shift I held the hand of a fifteen-year-old while she received her tri-monthly birth control shot. During another shift I sat in with the doctor while she told a seventeen-year-old girl that she had genital warts. A year ago I had no concept of the struggles facing a young girl in a low-income community.

Throughout my time at Crossroad Health Center, I have begun to gain awareness of the expectations and limitations of working in a low-income community. The client population of Crossroad Health Center includes low-income individuals, uninsured individuals, those with limited English proficiency, individuals and families experiencing homelessness, and those living in public housing. Because Crossroad Health Center serves patients regardless of ability to pay, the patients that the center serves are typically without access to other healthcare settings. This has been a new environment for me.

Whether I have struggled to find a working phone number for the parent of a child in need of seeing a specialist, struggled to help a patient locate a pharmacy within walking distance of their home, or struggled to find a pediatric dentist that will accept our patient's form of Medicaid, the experience has presented countless challenges and learning opportunities.

However, the most significant and most unexpected obstacle has been interacting with female patients just years younger than myself who have come for STD testing, pregnancy testing, and birth control. Listening to girls who are nearly my peers claim the opposite gender to be a major source of affirmation in life has opened my eyes to the complexity of addressing a patient's health. I have begun to realize the limitations of weak support systems and scarce opportunities to succeed on a young girl's health in a neighborhood such as Over-the-Rhine, Cincinnati. More importantly, the implementation and regulation of reasonable medicinal regimens in combination with ensuring that patients have the resources to maintain a healthy body, mind, and spirit has been made very clear to me in my time at Crossroad Health Center. I have only just begun my education and exploration of healthcare, specifically in low-income communities, but I see healthcare workers as capable of and responsible for working towards this change.

- By Caroline Hensley