Traveling doctor’s office to make its way through Seat Pleasant

The Wellmobile has an intake room, two examination rooms and registered nurses and nurse practitioners to provide acute care examinations for ailments such as aches, sore throats, the common cold and influenza. Residents do not need health insurance to receive exams, Acting City Administrator Sandra Yates said.

For patients with more serious ailments such as cancer and kidney disease, the Wellmobile will be equipped to give referrals to other facilities such as Prince George’s Hospital Center in Cheverly, Yates said.

Governor’s Wellmobile Program Director Rebecca Wiseman was on vacation and could not be reached by The Gazette’s deadline.

Seat Pleasant, a city of 5,000 residents, has participated in a health partnership with the University of Maryland since 1999. Dr. Jerrold Greenberg, partnership chairman and professor emeritus for the school’s Department of Public and Community Health, said he has lobbied for years to bring the Wellmobile to the city. But its arrival was delayed because it meant taking a Wellmobile away from another area in need, he said.

‘‘Part of their responsibility is to place the Wellmobile where the need is,” Yates said. ‘‘Certainly as more people lose health insurance, and job losses with the economy the way it is, the need is huge. It’s just a matter of getting the schedule so they can come to your community and then head back to Baltimore.”

There are three to four Wellmobiles that make weekly trips as far out as the Eastern Shore and as close by as Bladensburg, Greenberg said.

Through the Seat Pleasant-University of Maryland Health Partnership, public health students at the College Park campus provide residents with health education and evaluate the city’s health conditions. Greenberg said students attend the city’s annual Seat Pleasant Day in May to hold a health fair and provide free screenings for high blood pressure and diabetes. Every year, he said, students find someone completely unaware they had high blood sugar or blood pressure.

‘‘Seat Pleasant is 97 percent African-American,” Greenberg said. ‘‘We know from national data that the black population has certain health issues that are common, and one of those are diabetes, the other is hypertension. Those are services that are needed. We need to screen people that we know have diabetes or high glucose.”

Greenberg said bringing the Wellmobile to Seat Pleasant could reduce overcrowding at the Walker Mill Health Clinic on Addison Road, about two miles away from the Feggans Center.

Greenberg and Yates said they are considering contacting nearby Central and Fairmount Heights high schools to use the Wellmobile for giving student athletes their required physicals. However, Greenberg said, scheduling would have to be worked out between the schools and the Governor’s Wellmobile staff, and neither school has been contacted yet.

Yates hopes the monthly visits will expand to twice a month after three to four months.

E-mail Natalie McGill at nmcgill@gazette.net.