Letter to the editor - MedsHelp support appreciated Lynchburg News and Advance Saturday, October 2, 2004

Effective Sept. 30, MedsHelp will become a part of the Free Clinic of Central Virginia. Our missions and clients are similar and MedsHelp’s resources can be utilized more efficiently in a merged organization. MedsHelp began 13 years ago as a program of Interfaith Outreach, founded and nurtured by Lindsay Edwards. In January 2002, the program was organized as an entity separate from Interfaith under the direction of a community Board of Directors. MedsHelp helps more than 800 people in Central Virginia get the medicines they can’t afford. We estimated that the need is four or five times that. Our small staff and dedicated volunteers, overseen by our dedicated program director, Robin Turner, do the paperwork and provide the documentation required to obtain medication from drug company patient assistance programs at no charge. This work leverages every donated dollar to obtain about $20 worth of medication. We thank Interfaith Outreach for recognizing the need and finding a way to address it. We are grateful for the steadfast support of Centra Health, which has housed the program rent free at the Johnson Health Center and supported it in many other ways, including Centra Health Foundation grants that were instrumental in enabling the program to migrate from Interfaith. The MedsHelp program could not exist without the generous financial support of hundreds of Central Virginia citizens. We hope that that support will follow us to our new home at the Free Clinic. TRACEY SHAW Chairman Lynchburg

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