On May 17th, Children’s Health Fund & Nevada Health Centers, Inc., celebrated the expansion of our partnership with the unveiling of a new mobile medical clinic. The fully outfitted “doctors office on wheels”, which was built with funds from Red Nose Day USA, will be used to deliver high quality health care services to thousands of children in Nevada each year. See local coverage here.

Last year Children’s Health Fund and Red Nose Day had an exciting goal, to raise enough Red Nose Day funds to build and deliver a brand new, state of the art, mobile clinic to Nevada, and here we are, one year later – a promise kept!

Why Nevada? Well, in short, there is tremendous need but also tremendous capacity to do more for children who need our support. In Nevada, the child poverty rate is increasing and 22% of children – almost 1 in 4 – now live in poverty. Nevada also ranks highest in the nation for the number of homeless youth living on the streets, and on any given night more than 1,500 unaccompanied youth, including hundreds of unaccompanied children under 18, are homeless in Southern Nevada alone.

The new mobile medical clinic will provide desperately needed services to these underserved populations in Las Vegas at first, and then expand to other communities statewide needing assistance.

Many of the Children’s Health Fund models and strategies for reaching underserved and vulnerable populations were designed for the very challenges faced by families in Nevada. Children’s Health Fund estimates that this new mobile medical unit will increase Nevada Health Centers’ reach to more than 15,000 children and young people annually.

At the end of the day it will take all of us, doing all we can, to end child poverty in Nevada and across the nation. And while we don’t have a magic wand, we do have the Red Nose. With the support of Red Nose Day, we can now go “nose-to-nose” with poverty in Nevada, and together with our partner Nevada Health Systems, I know we will win!

Positively Onward!