Pittsylvania County Community Action nets grant

RICHMOND — Pittsylvania County Community Action Inc. in Chatham will receive $137,433 from the Virginia Health Care Foundation to hire outreach workers.

The workers will identify, enroll and retain eligible children and pregnant women in the state’s Family Access to Medical Insurance Security plan, the commonwealth’s health-insurance program.

The foundation provided $1.02 million to 14 health safety-net organizations across the state in response to the high numbers of uninsured patients seeking medical attention from Virginia’s already-burdened free clinics, community health centers and other health safety-net providers, according to a news release from the Virginia Health Care Foundation.

“Due to the recession, VHCF has received a record number of funding requests form the commonwealth’s safety-net providers,” said Debbie Oswalt, the foundation’s executive director, in a news release. “Virginia’s free clinics have been deluged with over 18,000 new patients in just the past six months, and have to turn 40 percent of them away due to a lack of resources. Virginia’s community health centers are also experiencing unprecedented demand and struggling to meet it.”

The Virginia Health Care Foundation is a nonprofit public/private partnership whose mission is to increase access to primary health care for uninsured and medically underserved Virginians by strengthening and growing the state’s health care safety net.