PANAMA CITY — Nine local charity organizations received a boon recently as the Bay Health Foundation awarded $500,000 in grants.
Rebecca Pierson, the Bay Health Foundation’s community development director, cited the foundation’s mission as “promoting the health and well-being of Bay County residents.”
The foundation chose the organizations based on several criteria, including how the organization works with others in the community, how its services will “improve community health in Bay County,” focus on prevention and wellness and others.
“Based on the applications and the requests, recommendations of funding is presented to Board of Trustees for final approval. Unfortunately, due to limited funding not all applicants receive funding, though their applications were well prepared,” Pierson said.
The following organization received grants:
-Anchorage Children’s Home, which serves at-risk, abused and neglected children and their families, received $60,000 for a street outreach and recovery program. The program aims to serve homeless youth in Bay County through local and state resources to get them off the streets for good.
-Avicenna Clinic, which serves uninsured patients whose gross family income is less than 200 percent of the federal poverty level, received $100,000 to fund staffing including a nurse practitioner, a certified nurse assistant as well as medications and supplies. With this grant, the clinic hopes to reduce patient wait time while being able to serve more patients.
-BASIC NWFL received $20,000 to expand and enhance their U R CONNECTED program. The program aims to decrease the community burden by providing care for HIV positive patients and ensuring they adhere to their medications. BASIC is the only HIV/AIDS organization in the six-county area and provides a full range of services from prevention through early intervention to treatment.
-Bay Cares was awarded $100,000 to fund staffing to coordinate specialty medical care services to indigent and uninsured patients in Bay County. Bay Cares works with St. Andrew Community Medical Center and Avicenna Clinic to provide specialty care to patients who cannot pay for it.
-The Bay County Council on Aging, which helps senior adults maintain their health and independence, received $46,500 to provide facility and in-home respite care for caregivers who provide 24 hour per day care for patients suffering from Alheimer’s disease and related dementias.
-The FSU Foundation received $30,000 to renovate and expand FSU Panama City’s early childhood autism program. The FSU Foundation provides applied behavioral analysis therapy to children with autism spectrum disorder and has helped close to 100 local children develop language, self-help, academic, social and communication skills.
-The Healthy Start Coalition was awarded $28,500 to fund its Safe Sleep program, which provides cribs, crib sheets and safe sleep instructions for parents and caregivers, and to purchase car seats for newborn babies. This money should provide 150 with cribs and sheets and 275 car seats.
-Second Chance of NWFL, which provides rehabilitation care for adult brain injury survivors, received $30,000 to fund its programs and increase membership.
-The St. Andrew Community Medical Center received $85,000 to continue and expand its services and to hire an advanced registered nurse practitioner, a registered nurse and a clerical staff person. The center provides general primary medical care for uninsured residents of Bay County and maintains a pharmacy that fills and distributes routine, non-narcotic medications to its patients.