Serving the most pressing health needs in the community while seeing to the education of tomorrow’s doctors is the goal of UAMS 12th Street Health and Wellness Center. Under the capable leadership of Dr. Lanita White, director, the center is redefining localized care.
“Our clinic is an interprofessional, student-run, community-based clinic,” White said. “All patients are seen in interprofessional teams where student health care providers are present for the entire interaction. This allows the team to experience real-time communication with each other and the patient. They are placed into an environment where they are able to learn with, from and about each other.
“Along with retraining our health care workforce, we are meeting the medical, mental health and dental needs of the community we serve. We have added services as identified by the community from our pre-opening community needs assessment, namely basic primary care, access to healthy foods and access to dental services.”
White graduated with her Pharm.D. degree from Xavier University of Louisiana in New Orleans in 2006, a member of the first graduating pharmacy class from the university after Hurricane Katrina. She completed PGY1 Pharmacy Practice Residency and PGY2 Ambulatory Care Specialty Residency at the Central Arkansas Veterans Health care System. She served as clinical pharmacist in the Diabetes and Endocrinology Clinic at the Central Arkansas Veterans Health care System in Little Rock and Clinical Assistant Professor at the UAMS College of Pharmacy from 2008 to July 2012, when she was hired in her current position.
Her three years at the community clinic have been marked by fresh thinking and innovative ideas to meet community needs and help advance the education of aspiring doctors. One example of this includes raising a vegetable and herb garden to supply healthful food to the community via an onsite food pantry.
“We harvest fresh vegetables and herbs at our on-campus student-run garden,” she said. “We bring them to the clinic to make both the fresh produce and dry food goods available to all patients.”
White said that as complex and technical as the health care industry has become, the key to delivering improved, compassionate care is most often a simple desire to seek a better way of doing things.
“Innovation is important in health care because it requires a new way of thinking and performing old duties to meet the changing needs of our patients,” she said.
Highlights
Lanita White’s three years at the UAMS 12th Street Health and Wellness Center have been marked by fresh thinking and innovative ideas to meet community needs and help advance the education of aspiring doctors. Under her watch, the clinic started a food pantry and vegetable and herb garden to supply healthful food to the community. Care is delivered through interprofessional teams where student health care providers are present for the entire interaction. This allows the team to experience real-time communication with each other and the patient.
Return to Arkansas Business Health Care Heroes 2016.
Sign up for Daily E-news
