Bee Busy Wellness receives a $75K grant

A southwest Houston clinic will receive $75,000 to address racial inequities in health care and the COVID-19 response.

Bee Busy Wellness Center, headquartered in Brays Oaks with satellite clinics in west Houston, southwest Houston and Clear Lake, was selected by the Siemens Foundation for the grant because of its service area.

The Siemens Foundation, a national nonprofit supporting educational initiatives, awarded $2 million in grants to 20 community health centers that predominantly service people of color.

Debrisha Johnson, the center’s chief medical officer, said the funds come when more patients are putting off routine wellness visits out of fear of contracting COVID-19.

“You have a lot of patients who aren’t sick enough to go to the

ER,” Johnson said. “but they’re just too sick to manage themselves at home.”

Community health centers across country are facing problems similar to those of hospitals and independent physicians, said David Etzwiler, CEO of the Siemens Foundation.

Protection isn’t cheap

Personal protective equipment costs remain high, and for many small clinics, the price of providing masks, gloves and face shields for staff can become a burden. Doctors are also forced to provide telehealth to safely see their patients, software

that can quickly become pricey.

And like larger hospitals, clinicians are worried that their patients with chronic health concerns such as diabetes and asthma are not coming in for visits. “Those issues don’t go away with COVID-19,” Etzwiler said. “They only get worse.”

Not only does that mean reduced patient volumes and revenue, it also means medical care gets more expensive the longer patients wait to care for their health issues.

The clinics were chosen because their patient population is primarily people of color. Positive coronavirus cases have proliferated in Harris County neighborhoods that are home to a large portion of Black and

Hispanic people.

Black people in Harris County make up 25 percent of the COVID-19 hospitalizations despite making up just 18 percent of the population, while Hispanic people account for more than 50 percent of hospitalizations despite being just 44 percent of the county surrounding Houston, according to county data.

High-risk population

Bee Busy Wellness Center was established in 2009 as a nonprofit federally qualifed health center, meaning it receives reimbursement from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to provide care in low-income communities and areas that do not have a large number of primary care doctors.

The center sees 10,000 patients annually, 43 percent of whom are Black and 37 percent of whom are Hispanic.

Those communities are at higher risk due to lower health insurance enrollment, higher likelihood of working essential jobs.

“Many people of color don’t have the luxury of staying home and working remotely,” said Mayor Sylvester Turner in a statement.

Johnson said the clinic wants to set up COVID-19 testing, and offer follow-up care for patients who recover from the coronavirus.

Funds will be disbursed in the coming weeks.