Key points:
- Luke’s House, a free clinic in New Orleans started by United Methodists, grew out of a need after Hurricane Katrina closed most avenues to health care.
- It was an inspiration from St. Mark’s United Methodist Church in Lincoln, Nebraska, which sent mission teams to New Orleans for 16 consecutive years, and ran its own clinic for the uninsured.
- After starting with a single doctor, the clinic has grown to have volunteer providers from around 30 different medical professions.
Luke’s House, a free clinic in New Orleans, grew out of a need sparked in the Rev. Callie Winn Crawford’s heart after Hurricane Katrina closed most avenues to health care.
It was an inspiration from St. Mark’s United Methodist Church in Lincoln, Nebraska, which sent mission teams to New Orleans for 16 consecutive years. St. Mark’s started a free clinic for the uninsured called “Clinic with a Heart.” Luke’s House is named for St. Luke, patron saint of physicians.
Crawford, then pastor of Rayne Memorial United Methodist Church, brought the need for a clinic to the outreach committee on a Sunday evening in 2006. She also brought the idea to the Rev. Connie Thomas, pastor of Mt. Zion United Methodist Church.
Thomas, who died in 2009, offered the church fellowship hall with the caveat that the clinic had to disappear when it wasn’t operating. Six exam rooms were made using PVC piping and sheets. Massage tables were exam tables. Everything was tucked away in a closet between clinic hours.
“At every meeting of the outreach committee, I would say, ‘I just want to help one person,’” Crawford said. “Well, the first night we opened and after the first client was helped and left, the doctors and nurses pulled back the sheets and yelled: ‘We just helped one person!’ I was just so happy.”
Bob Lancaster, a member of Rayne Memorial and a retired psychiatrist, volunteered at the clinic.
“He came every time the clinic opened and he had the most patients,” she said. “He had to have appointments; nobody else had appointments. There was such a need for mental health services.”
Dr. Susan Berry, a member of Rayne Memorial’s outreach team, said Lancaster was retired from Tulane.
“He died during COVID,” she said. “He was the third death of the COVID epidemic in Louisiana.”
Two weeks before the clinic was to open, Berry was the only doctor they had.
“I’m a pediatrician and I knew the people walking in were going to have all these problems — diabetes, hypertension and things older people get — that I don’t treat,” she said.
She contacted Louisiana State University and Tulane University asking for help. They all said, ‘Are you kidding? We don’t have enough people to staff our clinics.’”
Dr. Betty Lo-Blais, director of LSU’s medicine-pediatrics resident program, stepped forward and said she could bring residents and doctors to the clinic for two hours, one night a week.
The clinic moved from the foyer of Mt. Zion to a building on Simon Bolivar Avenue owned by The United Methodist Church’s Louisiana Conference. Its current location is the Edna Pilsbury Health Center. It is open on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 5 to 8 p.m.
Lo-Blais is still volunteering.
“Everyone is benefiting from Luke’s House. The residents are getting experience and the clinic provides great care for minimal expense,” she said. “It is a calling for us to do this.”
Saegan Swanson, executive director for Luke’s House said the clinic now serves the Spanish-speaking community in New Orleans.
“I think last year we saw patients from under a year to 92,” Swanson said.
The providers are volunteers from around 30 different medical professions, she said.
“We have a partnership with LSU’s ophthalmology department and so all of the providers who volunteer here are ophthalmologists versus optometrists, so our patients are able to get much more in-depth eye exams.”
Luke’s House is a teaching clinic and has students from their first year up to their fourth year, Swanson said. There are also students getting master’s degrees in counseling.
“People need to know this is a safe place to come and provide care that they normally would never be able to afford. Everyone deserves health care,” Lo-Blais said.
Church’s light shines bright in New Orleans
In the early days of Katrina recovery, Rayne Memorial United Methodist became a hub for housing and deploying volunteer teams that came to muck and gut the houses around New Orleans.
Gilbert is a freelance writer in Nashville, Tennessee, who covered the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina for UM News in 2005.
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