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The Latest from CoGenerate

Explore These 10 Simple Ways to Cogenerate

Explore These 10 Simple Ways to Cogenerate

At CoGenerate, we believe in the power of cogeneration: a strategy to bring older and younger people together to forge bonds across differences, combat polarization and ageism, and help solve today’s toughest problems. If you’re involved or interested in cogeneration,...

Event Recording: A CoGen Conversation About Grandfamilies

Event Recording: A CoGen Conversation About Grandfamilies

https://youtu.be/OedAsZVTm9U?si=q20TIH8zuwPEhE0a Today in the US, more than 2.4 million children whose parents are unable to care for them live in grandfamilies, where they are raised by grandparents or other loved ones. Until recently, their experiences have been all...

A Conversation Across 67 Years

A Conversation Across 67 Years

Ernie, 80 and Cedar, 13, show off the rocks they decorated with symbols based on their conversation.Last month, I traveled to Chautauqua, a 150-year-old institute in western New York that brings thousands of people together for summer programs focused on lifelong...

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Eugene Cheslock

Parker Family Health Clinic/Volunteers in Health, Inc.
Purpose Prize Fellow 2006

Enhancing community health through volunteer health professionals

After 35 years in medical practice, Dr. Eugene Cheslock was considering retiring in the late 1990s. Instead he went face to face with a problem he could no longer ignore – the increasing number of medically uninsured and the resulting strain on the health care system. In his own community in Red Bank, New Jersey, the problem was particularly glaring: 95 percent of those in the rapidly growing local Latino community had no health insurance; 30 percent of African Americans in town were in the same boat. In July 2000, Cheslock helped open The Parker Family Health Center in a converted trailer. The free medical clinic provides comprehensive coverage for the working poor. Volunteer professionals provide pediatric care, including well checks and immunizations, gynecology services, family practice/internal medicine, ophthalmology, children’s dentistry, diabetes and hypertension management, social service referrals, and assistance with insurance applications. The center has recorded more than 30,000 patient visits. Doctors volunteer 3,000 hours annually at the clinic, while nurses donate another 2,000 hours.