Nate Blum Partners with People’s City Mission to Fully Re-open Free Clinic
Nate Blum, friend of the Mission and executive director at Nebraska Grain Sorghum Board, held a fundraiser with a goal to raise $40,000 by his 40th birthday specifically to fund People’s City Mission’s (PCM, www.pcmlincoln.org) Free Clinic. With that goal nearly met, he is now focusing on funding an endowment that will sustain free medical care for the needy in Lincoln indefinitely.
PCM opened the Free Clinic in 2009 to provide quality healthcare to Lincoln’s homeless and working poor. Run by volunteers and receiving no taxpayer dollars to operate, the clinic quickly grew, becoming the third-largest free medical clinic in the country by 2016, with over 18,000 patient visits per year at the height of operation.
As costs skyrocketed, they made the difficult decision in 2019 to limit services to dental, podiatry, chiropractic, and mental health only. However, the need for medical care for the poor remains. Thousands in Lancaster County have no health insurance. Not having sufficient funds to pay for their medical treatment, many people go without the medications they need for conditions and often only find treatment only through hospital ER visits for which they can’t pay.
People’s City Mission was started in 1907 by local churches, offering food and shelter for transient and impoverished men, women, and children. In 1987, PCM moved to their current location and now houses 350 men, women, and children nightly in their emergency shelters and the Curtis Center transitional housing program. For more information, visit www.pcmlincoln.org or call (402) 475-1303.