COLUMBIA, S.C. — A free community clinic for patients without vision or dental insurance recently has received a $50,000 grant. The grant will be used by WellPartners to continue serving uninsured and underinsured individuals in Richland, Lexington, and Fairfield counties.
“That’s what makes you feel good, right?” said Dr. Elisabeth Lawson, an optometrist at the Richland WellPartners eye and dental clinic. “That you helped somebody, that you changed their life, for the better, and that you hopefully provided them a service that they can then use to better equip themselves and their life.”
WellPartners Clinics, owned and operated by United Way of the Midlands, serve patients in Richland, Lexington, and Fairfield counties without vision or dental insurance, who meet income requirements.
Dr. Tamara Stockton is the dental director for the Richland clinic. Stockton and Lawson both say the care they offer can be life-changing for patients.
“After the first visit, you get them out of pain, you educate them on the proper dental care, and their eyes kinda open,” Stockton said. “They’re more educated, they take responsibility for their dental health, and they just- their attitudes change and they wanna do better with a lot of things.”
“They can’t see any road signs, they can’t watch TV, they can’t see far away,” Lawson said. “They get that first pair of glasses and it’s like a whole new world, they can see all the leaves on the trees, they can see all the signs, they can see their family’s faces, they can tell who’s walking towards them.”
WellPartners clinics recently received a $50k grant from the Leon Levine Foundation that providers say will allow them to help more patients, like Mohamed Addahoumi.
“I feel really great about that,” said Mohamed Addahoumi, a patient at the dental clinic. “That’s really awesome.”
Addahoumi is one of over 5,000 people the clinics served in the last fiscal year, and says finding dental care elsewhere was almost impossible for him.
“Because everywhere you go is really expensive,” Addahoumi said. “Here you just apply for the papers and for free.”
The grant, which the foundation also provided in 2022, will go towards clinic operating expenses, bringing in more patients who qualify and continuing free care for the community.
“It’s huge for us,” Lawson said. “$50,000 goes a long way for eyewear, for our patients, allowing us to provide these free glasses for patients, also specialty contact lenses which we call medically necessary, we also have to do quite a few referrals.”
“We’re very excited about the Leon Levine grant that we recently received,” Stockton said. “It allows us to help with operating expenses because we are a free clinic, we are purely funded by grants, so getting grants like this allow us to continue serving the patients that we see and help provide them with services that we may not offer here.”
Stockton says funding is a consistent struggle and that the providers are grateful for the opportunity to help more people.
The WellPartners clinics in Lexington and Richland counties are located in the county health departments and potential patients can call to check eligibility.