prisoner to patient

A common challenge for people being released from prison and jail is maintaining their health care. Whether a brief stay for a younger person in Orleans Parish Prison awaiting trial, or decades spent at Angola by a now-elderly individual, there was no formal pathway from prisoner to patient, until now.

What began with a coffee meeting between Norris Henderson and William Vail, a 4th-year Tulane medical student, has now incorporated several clinical professors and fellow students--all who care strongly about closing this gap in community health. The Formerly Incarcerated Transitions (FIT) Clinic took its first patients in March 2015, and continues to provide medical care to FIPs on an all-volunteer basis. 

We call this project Prisoner to Patient (P2P). Our formerly incarcerated community health worker Danielle Metz is the lead for this work. Contact her if you would like to get involved with this clinic or to participate in the ongoing discussion about medical rights for FIP.

Volunteer staff at the FIT Clinic, a partnership with Tulane University, provide medical care to formerly incarcerated people.