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Community Corner

Bethesda Health and Wellness Center Seeking Volunteers

Community-based medical practice is located in the heart of Dacula.

Prompted by deeply personal motives, Bishop W. Ron Sailor, Sr. began laying the foundation for a community-based medical practice in the heart of Dacula in 2010. Following his own battle with illness, the veteran pastor of 16 years for felt compelled to provide a place of healing for those in need within his community. Located on the campus of the church at 258 Rabbit Hill Road, the credo for the new Bethesda Health and Wellness Center reads “Where Healing Begins” and it strives to practice what it preaches through a three-pronged approach of primary care access, disease and illness prevention and providing a healthcare network to the underserved and uninsured in Northeast Gwinnett County.

“We have already begun to serve two to three hundred people a month through our Health Education and Wellness Campaigns, with the intention of getting in front of the need for a doctor or an ambulance through invaluable information exchanges and adequate monitoring of issues such as obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes and kidney disease,” said Bishop Sailor, Bethesda’s Chairman of the Board of Directors. “Our long-term goals include providing access to family care medicine with affordable pharmaceutical support, the development of a health network for those in need by bringing health services resources to bear in Northeast Gwinnett – making it easier to manage the community’s collective health and control chronic diseases, and our designation as a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC).”

In order to make all this happen, the Center is seeking healthcare volunteers from Dacula and the surrounding community – including physicians, registered nurses, certified nurse assistants and nurse practitioners who are willing and able to dedicate six hours, one Saturday a month to the Center. Services at the Center include immunizations, infectious disease testing and treatment, general lab work, pregnancy testing, and chronic disease screening for adults, and wellness check-ups, hearing and vision screening, immunizations and sick visits for children.

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Health education incorporates chronic disease self-management to learn how to live with illnesses such as hypertension, diabetes and high cholesterol.  Monthly wellness initiatives have included Stroke Prevention in May and Smoke Cessation in June. Men’s Health is the focus for July, and will include prostate cancer (PSA) screenings at no cost to the client.

The Center is open one day a week – on Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and patients are seen on a first-come, first-served basis. Currently, Bethesda Health and Wellness Center employs only one full-time staffer and is completely funded through private resources, with no help from government grants.

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“Dacula is a community rich with people willing to help,” Sailor said. “It’s vital that we take stewardship of our own health on a local level, and not rely on the government to do it for us. Whether you’re talking about Healthcare, Medicare, or Obamacare – what matters most is that we care.”

To volunteer your services to Bethesda Health and Wellness Center, contact Clinic Administrator Rhonda Peavy  via e-mail at rhondapeavy@bethesdahw.com or by phone at (770) 962-2231. To learn more, please visit Bethesda Health & Wellness online.

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