With eight locations across the New Orleans metro area, our community partner St. Thomas Community Health Center serves insured, uninsured and underinsured residents in New Orleans.  St. Thomas states its mission is to provide culturally competent high quality healthcare, regardless of the ability to pay. St. Thomas also supports research and educational activities to reduce health disparities in our community. Acknowledging the role of institutional racism as the cause of these disparities is central to their mission.

 Colleen Frampton, RN, who has been employed at St. Thomas Clinic for fourteen years, said St. Thomas has been an antiracist institution since its inception. As the forces of racism persist and in order to not lose focus, all clinic employees are required to attend an annual two day Undoing Racism seminar. The seminar has been led by the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond for many years.

Frampton said, “For our organization, the annual seminars are crucial to our engagement but also showing the public what we believe is important.  We displayed a large Black Lives Matter banner from our main location on Magazine Street after the murder of George Floyd in order to publicly show our support.”

If you’d like to learn more about St. Thomas Community Health Center, visit their website.