You Can Make a Difference
Each year, Wheeler serves more than 30,000 individuals and families in 90% of Connecticut’s cities and towns through primary & pediatric care, dental services, behavioral health services, treatment for addiction, and more! With your support, we can help so many more medically underserved infants, children, adults, and families. Hear some of our stories, and please help us provide health, recovery, and growth for all ages.
Our areas of greatest philanthropic need this year include:
Basic Needs Fund.
Wheeler's new Basic Needs Fund addresses a range of environmental and social factors that interfere with a patient’s health and well-being, but are not addressed by other means of funding.
The purpose of Wheeler's Basic Needs Fund is to provide resources to address basic needs such as: food, transportation, clothing, shelter, medications, or other items or activities that cannot be accessed through a patient's own resources and/or community-based social service programs. The fund will be used when a patient’s physical and emotional well-being are impacted by lack of the needed resources and, as a consequence, the patient’s health condition may deteriorate and health outcomes may not improve. Any patient at Wheeler's Family Health & Wellness Centers is eligible if they have: an urgent social or physical unmet need that could potentially worsen their health status and delay treatment; the patient is actively engaged with health center staff; and the patient has no other means or has exhausted all other efforts to obtain the needed resources.
Our new fund will allow our community health workers to purchase a new mattress and address other environmental conditions that might lead to poor health outcomes. Your donation provides for the supports and services that insurance and other funding doesn’t…a new mattress for a child with asthma who sleeps on a filthy bed each night, or a taxi ride for a mom who can’t easily take her children on the bus to an appointment.
Or a mother suffering from diabetes, socially isolated and caring for two small children, who temporarily loses her health coverage and now requires short-term support to purchase insulin to prevent a hospitalization and have her children placed in the care of the state child welfare system.
Or another mom who misses critical medical follow-up appointments to manage her hypertension and serious mental health issues because taking the bus to a medical appointment with three small children is overwhelming. By covering the cost of a taxi or a babysitter, we are able to assist her in getting the care she needs.
Wheeler Innovation Fund.
Your dollars allow our staff to experiment with new ideas and address issues with innovative approaches. Some may fail, but others won’t. For example, we recently launched a yoga program for pain management as an alternative to prescription opioid painkillers.
General Support.
Support the care of individuals, families, and communities across our state each year, through Wheeler’s continuum of more than 100 services and programs.