The Wright Center for Patient & Community Engagement is hosting two safe and fun Trunk-N-Treat events for little superheroes, sports figures and princesses, as well as ghouls and goblins at the Mid Valley and North Pocono practices in October.
The Wright Center for Patient & Community Engagement is hosting two safe and fun Trunk-N-Treat events for little superheroes, sports figures and princesses, as well as ghouls and goblins at the Mid Valley and North Pocono practices in October. The Mid Valley Practice is welcoming families and children of all ages on Friday, Oct. 28 and the North Pocono Practice is offering its event on Saturday, Oct. 29. Both events are from 5:30-7 p.m.
The free, family-friendly events begin Friday, Oct. 28 from 5:30-7 p.m. at The Wright Center for Community Health Mid Valley Practice, 5 S. Washington Ave., Jermyn. The North Pocono Practice, 260 Daleville Highway, Suite 103, Covington Township, is hosting its own ghoulish good time on Saturday, Oct. 29 from 5:30-7 p.m.
All children and their parents or guardians are invited to participate in the free trick-or-treat events. The Wright Center’s physicians, administration, staff and board members will decorate their vehicles and distribute candy and healthy treats to children who participate in the annual event.
The Wright Center for Community Health has eight regional primary care clinics in Lackawanna, Luzerne and Wayne counties, including Driving Better Health, a mobile clinic.
The Wright Center’s network of eight primary care practices in Northeast Pennsylvania primarily serves patients from Lackawanna, Luzerne, Susquehanna, Wayne and Wyoming counties. They provide full-service, family-friendly services that cover the lifespan, from pediatrics to geriatrics. Its integrated services offer patients the convenience of going to a single location to access medical, dental, behavioral health, addiction and recovery services, and other supportive service lines.
Patients can schedule appointments by visiting The Wright Center’s website atTheWrightCenter.org and using the express online scheduling service. Learn more about The Wright Center’s mission and integrated health care services by calling 570-230-0019 or visiting TheWrightCenter.org.
The Wright Center for Graduate Medical Education has named Vinod Sharma, M.D., a board-certified psychiatrist, as the program director for the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education-accredited Psychiatry Residency. Sharma had been serving as the associate program director of the program since 2021.
Sharma succeeds Sanjay Chandragiri, M.D., Ph.D., FACP, the founding program director who helped establish the residency in 2017 in response to the national shortage of psychiatrists.
Vinod Sharma, M.D.
The Wright Center for Graduate Medical Education’s first class of residents graduated in 2021.
Sharma is a graduate of the Government Medical College in Amritsar, India. He completed his general psychiatry residency at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in Lubbock, Texas, and a fellowship in child and adolescent psychiatry at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, Springfield, Illinois.
His tenure at The Wright Centers for Community Health and Graduate Medical Education began in 2020 as an outpatient psychiatrist. Sharma also served as medical director of behavioral health from 2021 until assuming his new duties. As associate program director, he precepted psychiatry residents and medical students; completed formal evaluations according to ACGME regulations; and taught residents in the clinic and presented academic lectures during didactics.
In addition, Sharma serves our partner institution, A.T. Still University School of Osteopathic Medicine (ATSU-SOMA) in Arizona, as an adjunct clinical assistant professor for students in Northeast Pennsylvania. He precepts ATSU-SOMA students at clinical sites and completes their formal evaluations.
Sharma also accepts children and adults as psychiatric patients at The Wright Center for Community Health Mid Valley Practice, 5 South Washington Ave., Jermyn, and the Scranton Practice, 501 S. Washington Ave., Scranton. To schedule an appointment, go online to TheWrightCenter.org and use the express scheduling system or call 570-230-0019. For more information about The Wright Center’s mission and integrated health care services, visit TheWrightCenter.org.
Dr. Surbhi Abrol, a board-certified general practice dentist, has joined The Wright Center for Community Health where she is accepting new patients of all ages at Wright Center primary care practices in Lackawanna and Wayne counties.
The Wright Center for Community Health offers comprehensive dental services for the entire family, including emergency services and routine check-ups and cleanings, plus denture care, oral cancer screenings, extractions, fillings and X-rays, regardless of a patient’s insurance status or ability to pay. With a sliding-fee discount available, The Wright Center ensures high-quality oral care is affordable and accessible to everyone.
Dr. Surbhi Abrol
Abrol will see patients at the Hawley Practice, 103 Spruce St., Hawley; Mid Valley Practice, 5 S. Washington Ave., Jermyn; and Scranton Practice, 501 S. Washington Ave., Scranton. In addition, she will staff select pop-up dental clinics aboard the Driving Better Health mobile medical unit that will provide offer regional residents convenient access to dental care.
Born and raised in India, she is a graduate of Panjab University in Chandigarh, India, where she received a Bachelor of Science degree in dental surgery. Abrol completed the prosthodontics and Master of Dental Surgery program at Himachal Pradesh University in Sundernagar, India, where she graduated at the top of her class. In 2017, she completed her prosthodontics residency at the Himachal Dental College. Abrol earned her Doctor of Dental Medicine degree at the Boston University Henry M. Goldman School of Dental Medicine.
The Wright Center’s new dentist most recently worked as an associate dentist at a private dental practice in Scranton.
The Wright Center was designated a Federally Qualified Health Center Look-Alike in 2019.
It offers high-quality, affordable integrated care at its network of primary care practices in Northeast Pennsylvania, providing patients with the convenience of going to a single location to access medical, dental and behavioral health care, plus addiction treatment and other supportive services.
To schedule a dental appointment at the primary care practice that is most convenient for you, go to TheWrightCenter.org to use the express online scheduling system or call 570-230-0019 to schedule an appointment. For additional information, go to TheWrightCenter.org and click on patient care and primary care offices.
The Wright Center for Community Health’s Driving Better Health mobile medical unit brings high-quality, nondiscriminatory, affordable health care services directly to the most vulnerable and medically underserved populations in Northeast Pennsylvania. Driving Better Health is offering routine vaccination clinics in September to ensure the region is ready for flu season and the fall and winter months. For the most current list of mobile medical unit clinics, go to TheWrightCenter.org/events.
The Wright Center for Community Health’s mobile medical unit is visiting numerous school districts and social service agencies in September throughout Lackawanna and Luzerne counties to ensure students, individuals and families receive the vaccines they need for school and the fast-approaching flu season in the fall.
The 34-foot mobile medical unit, known as Driving Better Health, will be providing routine vaccinations, flu vaccinations and COVID-19 testing, vaccinations and boosters at the following locations:
Sept. 12: New Roots Recovery Support Center, 100 S. Wyoming St., Hazleton, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Sept. 14: Hazleton Integration Project: 225 E. 4 th St., Hazleton, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Sept. 16: Community Intervention Center, 445 N. 6 th Ave., Scranton, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Sept. 21: Wyoming Valley West Middle School, 201 Chester St., Kingston, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Sept. 23: St. Francis of Assisi Food Pantry, 500 Penn Ave., 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Sept. 28: Hazleton Area School District, 1515 W. 23 rd St., Hazleton, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Driving Better Health enables The Wright Center for Community Health to deliver high-quality, nondiscriminatory health care where patients live and work in Northeast Pennsylvania. COVID-19 vaccines and boosters are available for any child ages 5 and up. A guardian must accompany patients who are younger than 17. Walk-up appointments are welcome depending on vaccine availability, but appointments are encouraged for the convenience of patients. Please go to TheWrightCenter.org to use the express online scheduling system or call 570-230-0019 to schedule an appointment.
Guests are asked to observe public safety measures, including masking and social distancing, during the vaccination clinics and bring identification and insurance cards.
The Wright Center for Community Health is a Federally Qualified Health Center Look-Alike. Community health centers offer high-quality, affordable, nondiscriminatory safety-net health care services and are the largest providers of primary care for the nation’s most vulnerable and medically underserved populations. Prevalent in both urban and rural settings, community health centers are located in regions with high-poverty rates and/or low numbers of private or nonprofit health care systems and hospitals.
The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, recently awarded two Community Health Quality Recognition awards to The Wright Center for Community Health, affirming its efforts to advance quality care in the region and connect its patients to enabling services.
HRSA annually reviews health centers’ performance data and bestows badges on federal Health Center Program awardees and Look-Alikes that have made notable quality improvement achievements. New for this year was an Addressing Social Risk Factors to Health badge. The Wright Center was awarded that recognition as well as a 2022 Advancing Health Information Technology for Quality badge.
The awards mark the second year in a row that The Wright Center has earned a badge for its use of health information technology.
The badge recognizes the organization’s efforts in the areas of telehealth, patient engagement and interoperability, the latter of which refers to its ability to exchange data and information with other health care-related organizations and/or state and federal agencies.
The newly introduced Addressing Social Risk Factors to Health badge recognizes “health centers that are administering standardized screening tools to collect social risk factor data and increasing enabling services offered across consecutive years,” according to HRSA.
The Wright Center uses a screening tool at its primary care practices to help identify patients who might be coping with adverse social and economic determinants of health, such as food insecurity, homelessness and poverty. The organization’s community health workers and other members of its care team can then talk with a patient and offer various forms of assistance tailored to meet the individual’s short- and long-term needs, including transportation assistance, nutritious food, legal aid, educational opportunities and connections to social service agencies.
“The two badges recognizing The Wright Center’s work last year testify to our patient-centered approach to health care,” said Dr. Jignesh Sheth, chief medical officer for The Wright Center for Community Health. “Our clinical teams and support staff are always striving to improve systems so that patients and their families are supported and empowered to get the care they need and deserve, whether that’s the convenience of a telehealth visit or the comfort of receiving fresh foods to carry them through a difficult time.”
The Wright Center for Community Health is a Federally Qualified Health Center Look-Alike that operates eight primary care practices in Lackawanna, Luzerne and Wayne counties.
The Wright Center provides safety-net, comprehensive primary and preventive health services – including medical, dental, behavioral health, addiction and recovery, and infectious disease services – that cover the lifespan from pediatrics to geriatrics. A special emphasis is placed on medically underserved populations, and no patient is turned away due to an inability to pay.
The Wright Center for Community Health, along with Luzerne County Community College, The Institute, the Northeast Pennsylvania Area Health Education Center and the Wayne Pike Workforce Alliance have joined together to reduce the stigma associated with substance use disorder by connecting people in recovery with recovery-friendly employers in the new community-based, recovery-to-work program, Project PROGRESS.
Project PROGRESS is an acronym for Providing Recovery Opportunities for Growth, Education and Sustainable Success, which serves Northeast Pennsylvania counties, including Lackawanna, Luzerne, Pike, Susquehanna, Wayne and Wyoming.
Project PROGRESS is funded in part through a grant from the Appalachian Regional Commission along with financial support from the five partner organizations. “The goal of the project is to reduce the impact of stigma related to recovery on employees, employers and the region. Often people connect recovery and substance use, which is true, but think bigger. Recovery is about coming into healthy ways of being. The impact of being in recovery is incredible and demonstrates hard work. Whole communities benefit when people are in recovery,” said Meaghan Ruddy, Ph.D., senior vice president of Academic Affairs, Enterprise Assessment and Advancement, and Chief Research and Development Officer for The Wright Center for Community Health.
In November 2020, Gov. Tom Wolf renewed for the 12th time his declaration that the opioid epidemic has placed Pennsylvania in a state health emergency. From 2015 to 2018, 1,149 people are reported to have died from opioid overdoses in the project’s six-county service area, according to OverdoseFreePA.
Meaghan Ruddy, Ph.D.
“A community’s capacity to create anything at the community level will in large part rely on the robustness of that community’s understanding of a need and commitment to creating solutions to meet that need. Leadership and innovative organizations in the six counties of focus for Project PROGRESS are painfully aware of the impact the opioid crisis is having on our friends and neighbors,” said Dr. Ruddy.
Yet, according to Dr. Ruddy, many community members lack an understanding of addiction as a chronic illness. In addition, health care workers default to stigmatizing the language of addiction when treating patients and many employers refuse to hire people in recovery. “This is all part of a structural misunderstanding of the tragic complexity of individuals struggling with addiction, and a lack of knowledge of the fact that individuals in recovery create communities in recovery,” she said.
Project PROGRESS seeks to promote educational options for people in recovery as well as promote community comprehension of the value of recovery. Luzerne County Community College is a member of Project PROGRESS. It engages by offering training to become a certified recovery specialist (CRS).
The role of a CRS is to build a strong and unique rapport with the individual in recovery based on their own lived experiences with substance use disorder. The CRS will help navigate, advocate and support individuals through their recovery journey. A CRS works to facilitate positive change and instill hope by modeling stable recovery and sharing strategies for success.
The first CRS cohort graduated in January with 11 graduates. A second cohort with 17 graduates completed their program in late April, bringing the total number of certified recovery specialists to 28. The program includes 66 in-class hours along with 12 hours of work to be completed outside of class. The training is designed to prepare individuals for work in the behavioral health field. Upon successful completion of the class, participants move on to the application process with the Pennsylvania Certification Board.
Northeast Pennsylvania Area Health Education Center, a member of Project PROGRESS, offers training to become a community health worker. This 80-hour program is accredited through the Pennsylvania Certification Board and is designed to provide the core competencies needed for work in community-based and inpatient settings.
Wayne Pike Workforce Alliance, also a member of Project PROGRESS, offers a recovery-to-work program that seeks to develop a strong recovery-to-work ecosystem. The Wayne Pike Workforce Alliance is focused on short-term training for immediate outcomes and employability. It uses the Comprehensive Adult Student Assessment System testing and interest assessments to ensure educational success to determine the best fit.
