Georgia Partnership Aims to Use Telehealth to Help the Uninsured

Emory University is partnering with a Georgia-based non-profit to study how telehealth can be used to help low-income, uninsured people with chronic conditions access healthcare services.

The Atlanta-based university’s Rollins School of Public Health is working with Giving Health, which provides no-cost telehealth consults and discount prescriptions to uninsured Georgia residents. The study, which was launched in May and I scheduled to end in October, aims to develop more strategies for using connected health to reach this population.

“Together, we will identify opportunities for expanding our current program to allow for the diagnosis, treatment, and management of chronic conditions affecting clients who do not have a primary care home and as a result are not accessing the care they need,” Giving Health Executive Director Michael Giglio said in a press release.

“Working alongside Giving Health, students will explore the practical application of healthcare technology in the treatment of patients with chronic conditions who live outside of the current healthcare system,” added Laura Lloyd, an advisor with the Executive Master of Public Health (EMPH) program at the Rollins School of Public Health.

Giving Health works with community health clinics, food pantries and other non-profits to tackle the barriers that so often keep people from accessing needed healthcare services.

Similar programs are in place across the country, many using telehealth and mHealth to give people access to primary and specialty care services that they can’t or won’t access in person. The situation is even more critical now, due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Examples of such programs include telehealth kiosks placed in VA centers, libraries, clinics and other locations, mHealth programs offered through popular community locations like barbershops and salons, mobile health units equipped with telemedicine equipment and dispatched to underserved neighborhoods and areas frequented by the homeless, and community clinics offering free or reduced rate telehealth access not only to care providers, but social services, housing and legal help, nutrition experts and other resources.