Community Service Programs

A true commitment to health care extends far beyond the walls of doctors’ offices and hospital rooms. The programs we're involved with are not all directly related to health care. Some of them involve education and public safety, neighborhood redevelopment, and support for the disabled. The common thread through them all is our dedication to building healthy communities throughout Southwest Ohio.

Atrium Maternal Health Clinic

Atrium Maternal Health Clinic has provided a wide spectrum of care to low-income patients in the community since 1975. We provide compassionate, comprehensive health care regardless of our patients’ financial status. Our trained staff work with all patients to help them find the resources they need to ensure access to services, and to decrease the financial burden on them and their families.  

Atrium Maternal Health Clinic provides services that promote the health and well-being of women. Health prevention, routine examinations, detection, screening and the treatment of illness are all part of our care. Early prevention and screening for women improves the health of the community. Adult vaccines prevent communicable diseases and potentially life-threatening complications.  

Atrium Maternal Health Clinic provides gynecological and pregnancy services including:

• Annual preventive exams (pelvic exams or Pap smears, breast examinations)
• Mammogram referral
• Gynecological care and information
• Preconception counseling
• Sexually transmitted disease evaluation and treatment
• Birth control
• Sterilization
• Smoking cessation referrals
• Health education
• Pregnancy testing
• Prenatal care for low-risk mothers
• Prenatal care for high-risk mothers (gestational diabetes, hypertension, pre-term labor, advanced maternal age)
• Childbirth education classes
• Breastfeeding support and education
• Minor office procedures 
• Immunizations
• Prenatal group classes called CenteringPregnancy 

A social worker is also available to all our patients. Each day during office hours, our on-site social worker assists mothers and children with challenges including:

• Housing, food and medical needs
• WIC and Help Me Grow referrals
• Referrals for psychiatric and/or substance abuse
  

Bridge Program

Homeless psychiatric patients are among our community’s most vulnerable members. The Bridge Program was created in 1999 to provide case-management services for these people.

Our services begin when a patient who is homeless is discharged from the hospital. We continue to provide service by helping them register with a community mental health center, thus creating a bridge of mental health care.

The case manager, a registered nurse with extensive psychiatric experience, makes contact with patients to explain the program and services the program provides:

• Assistance with Medicaid or other types of financial aid
• Crisis intervention
• Medication management
• Ongoing supportive therapy
• Psychiatric center appointments

CVS Clinical Partnership

In 2014, CVS Health and Premier Health announced a clinical affiliation where patients served by Premier will continue to have access to clinical support, medication counseling, chronic disease monitoring, and wellness programs at CVS/pharmacy stores and MinuteClinic, the retail medical clinic of CVS Health. Learn more about the Premier Health and CVS partnership.

Dayton Women’s Fair

To support our commitment to community health, we work to find events that provide opportunities for engagement with people of the community. The Dayton Women’s Fair provides an excellent opportunity for Premier Health to offer important screenings and health information to women from all over Southwest Ohio.

Genesis Program

In 1998, Miami Valley Hospital pledged to improve the health and quality of life in the neighborhood surrounding the hospital (the fairgrounds). The program’s goals were to get residents involved in their neighborhood, take pride in their surroundings and build a better community. Partners in this program included:

• University of Dayton
• CityWide Development
• County Corp.
• The City of Dayton

The result was a safer and more desirable place to live and work. More than a dozen new businesses moved into the neighborhood, housing redevelopment occurred, and neighborhood associations are now more active.

GetUp Montgomery County

As a gold star partner with GetUp Montgomery County, we’re helping families and individuals get healthier and stay healthier, teaming up on a variety of initiatives and support programs they offer throughout the year.

GetUp Montgomery County provides educational and informational resources for county residents. They have created a public health awareness campaign and sponsored the GetUp Healthy City Challenge between the cities of Vandalia and Centerville.

Good Neighbor Partnership

We view improving safety in our community as essential to helping members of the community live healthy lives. In 1998, Miami Valley Hospital and the Dayton Police Department’s Second District created the Good Neighbor Partnership. This successful community program teamed up police officers with social workers in the neighborhoods of the fairgrounds and South Park. The program succeeded by:

• Listening to neighborhood concerns
• Reducing crime
• Providing protection for citizens
• Promoting community health services

The resulting decrease in crime paved the way for the opening of more than a dozen new businesses in the area. Plus, more than 350 residents received services not typically associated with police protection, including:

• Referrals for mental health counseling
• Responses to child abuse
• Responses to domestic violence
• Responses to alcohol abuse
• Responses to drug addiction

Junior Achievement

The Junior Achievement (JA) program educates and inspires young people to succeed in a global economy. JA places volunteers in local school districts to teach courses in business and economics. Programs begin at the elementary school level and continue through middle and high school, focusing on business skills, work readiness and financial responsibility.

Atrium Medical Center has played an active role in the program by participating in the JA board of directors since the JA’s inception in 1938. Atrium Medical Center also supports JA’s annual campaign.

Mahogany’s Child

Since 2001, improving the health of African-Americans in our community has been the goal of Mahogany’s Child. This program started as an effort to educate African-American women about healthy behaviors and disease detection. It has grown into a broader program working to reach both African-American women and men with knowledge and activities to improve health and encourage healthy behaviors. Learn more about Mahogany’s Child.

Midwest Health Collaborative

Premier Health, along with five other leading health care systems in Ohio, agreed to form a large-scale entity whose mission is to improve the value of health care services delivered to patients and communities throughout Ohio. Learn more about the Midwest Health Collaborative.

My Sister’s Keeper

In the United States, Caucasian women tend to get breast cancer more often, yet African-American women die of it more often. Armed with this unacceptable fact, Premier Community Health developed My Sister’s Keeper.

My Sister’s Keeper educates African-American women age 40 or older about the importance of regular mammography. To make the program appealing, it uses fun, educational parties that include goody bags, games, food, and door prizes. At the end of each party, every participant is asked to commit herself to scheduling an appointment for her annual mammogram. Through My Sister’s Keeper, more than 1,000 women learned this important message in 2008. Of those, 155 women received their first mammogram, with one detecting cancer.

Phoenix Project

As part of Good Samaritan Hospital’s (closed in 2018) commitment to give back to the community, the hospital partnered with the city of Dayton and CityWide Development Corporation for an initiative called the Phoenix Project.

Named after the legendary bird that regenerates itself, the Phoenix Project is a comprehensive plan to revitalize the Fairview and Mount Auburn neighborhoods surrounding the hospital. The goal of the project is to spur ongoing development and investment to maintain the neighborhood as a safe and attractive urban community for residents and businesses.

The Phoenix Project focuses on the building blocks of strong neighborhoods:

• Business
• Education
• Housing
• Growth
• Neighborhood safety
• Social network

In an effort to improve homeownership in the area, the project offers low-interest home improvement loans to resident owners and down-payment help for first-time home buyers. The Phoenix Project also offers a summer day camp for neighborhood youth, and a training and employment program for teenagers. 

Project SEARCH

The disabled often require support to achieve life goals that many of us take for granted. Project SEARCH provides employment and education opportunities for people with significant disabilities. Our program offers workforce development that benefits the individual, community, and workplace.

Premier Health provides the Project SEARCH program through Butler Technology and Career Development schools and the Miami Valley Career Technology Center. Participants receive training in a variety of jobs throughout the hospital, working in each area for 12 weeks during the school year.

Reach Out Montgomery County

We believe that every individual in the community should receive quality health care. That’s why doctors and other health care professionals at Premier Health are involved in Reach Out Montgomery County. 

Established in 1995, this nonprofit organization provides health care to under-served and uninsured patients in the community. This successful program helps determine and respond to the needs of this group, including barriers to care and limited resources.

Reach Out Montgomery County offers family practice, women’s health and pediatric services. The wide range of volunteers includes

• Medical extenders, such as nurse practitioners
• Medical students
• Nursing students
• Office personnel
• Pharmacists
• Physicians
• Registered nurses
• Residents
• Translators

Collectively, these volunteers donate more than 6,000 hours of service annually.

Samaritan Homeless Clinic

Medical care for the homeless is a pressing need in our community. To meet this need, Good Samaritan Hospital (closed in 2018) opened Samaritan Homeless Clinic in 1992. The goal of the clinic is to help break the connection between homelessness and poor personal health.

The clinic takes an integrated approach toward primary and preventive services. With our mission of serving the total well-being of the homeless, the Samaritan Homeless Clinic delivers quality, compassionate care to help our patients get back on their feet.