New Mobile Clinic for Children of Ho-Chunk Nation
A New Doctor Rolls into the Ho-Chunk Nation
CBS News8000 Sep 01, 2012
BLACK RIVER FALLS, Wis. -- Children in the Ho-Chunk Nation will now have access to health care that will roll right to them.
The Ho-Chunk Nation received its first mobile pediatric clinic today.
Tribal members celebrated its arrival during a Labor Day pow wow in Black River Falls.
The mobile clinic is from the national Children's Health Fund, an organization that provides mobile health care to children who otherwise would not have access to it.
The organization's president Irwin Redlener said the success of the mobile clinic depends upon a partnership.
"We want to make sure we're welcomed into the community, not some outsider coming in to push everything else aside. But with the Ho-Chunk Nation, it's been a very easy process. There's been a lot of discussion about traditional needs and values and so forth and so we're very tuned into that," said Redlener.
The clinic will travel across the state on a weekly basis to all of the ho-chunk communities.
It provides the same services people would expect to receive at a traditional clinic.
While it's the first one to serve a Native American community, members of the Ho-Chunk Nation hope it won't be the last.
"Ho-Chunk has been able to be on the national radar in regards to this. We've already had inquiries from other tribes looking to us to see how they will develop this, because a lot of tribes are isolated rurally," said the Director of Health at the Ho-Chunk Nation Alec Thundercloud.
Officials said the clinic will also serve non-native children who live in the Ho-Chunk communities.
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First Pediatric Mobile Clinic in Indian Country to Deliver Vital Services to Ho-Chunk Nation’s Medically Underserved Children (CHF Press Release)
A New Doctor Rolls into the Ho-Chunk Nation
WOXW Sep 01, 2012
