JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Providing culturally competent quality healthcare to all.
That’s the goal of Life Tree Women Care, a clinic that just opened this week on Jacksonville’s westside.
The founders are husband and wife and they’ve been working towards this for more than 20 years.
They say it’s the first Black-owned women’s health clinic that is owned by a nurse practitioner in Northeast Florida. And they say they are ready to make an impact in the community.
“I’m here to fill a void in this area,” said founder Jamie Neal.
Neal and her husband Derek are working to bring what they call culturally competent care to Jacksonville.
“Culturally competent care, to me means that I’m going to meet the woman where she is and take care of her the way she wants to be taken care of,” Jamie Neal said.
Neal is an Advanced Registered Nurse Practitioner.
She said too many women on Jacksonville’s westside don’t have access to effective and affordable healthcare which she says contributes to disparities in Black and brown communities.
With this center, they hope to change that by being another healthcare provider in the area.
“So when the advanced nurse practitioners lead clinics like this you won’t have those doctors that now they’re not given the proper care because they have 50 patients to see in that day. So now this can broaden the range, whereas that maybe we’re making an impact, because now they may have more time to give to those patients and to care for their patients,” Derek Neal said.
They say they are creating a new market and they are ready to help change health care for women in Jacksonville.
“Duval County has the highest infant mortality rate in the whole state and it seems to be getting worse,” Jamie Neal said. “And I want to fix things, I want to make it better. Our goal is to go where there’s a need and there’s a need here in this area where we are located. There are not that many female, you know, providers for women. And, and some, a lot of providers are coming away from certain insurances and things like that. So there is a strong need for us here in this area where that disparity is so great.”
The clinic will start taking appointments on June 1.