CommunityHealth shines the Volunteer Spotlight on Dr. Barbara Shaw as our August Volunteer of the Month!
Dr. Shaw joined CommunityHealth in October of 2021, volunteering a total of 160 hour to our clinic. As one of the first providers to join the team when CommunityHealth opened a microsite at Enlace Chicago, Dr. Shaw has been serving patients at that location every month since then.
Known for her resourcefulness and creativity in finding solutions to her patients’ worries, Dr. Shaw fits well into the ever-adapting nature of our microsite model. Outside of clinical work. Dr. Shaw has hosted a handful of educational sessions for other providers, and was even a speaker at our All In event last year.
During the 2024 Volunteer of the Year Awards, Dr. Shaw won the award for Primary Care Provider Volunteer of the Year. You can watch the awards ceremony through the link below.
CommunityHealth sat down with Dr. Shaw to learn more about what quality health care for all means to her…
In a few sentences, tell us more about yourself and your background.
I’ve been a family nurse practitioner for over 30 years. I became a nurse practitioner because I was inspired by the work of Lillian Wald, the first public health nurse, and the Henry Street Settlement, which she founded. They lived with and cared for immigrants to New York City in the late 19th century. They represented the kind of integrated, community-based healthcare that resonated with me.
In a lot of ways, CommunityHealth represents many of those same ideals. My favorite memories are of the work of CH with migrants and asylum-seekers, going to police stations and meeting the needs of patients as best we could, which took a lot of teamwork and creativity.
Why and how did you begin volunteering with CommunityHealth?
I started to volunteer with CH many years ago, when I first moved back to Chicago from the East Coast. Remember that dilapidated building on Ashland? That’s where I started, back in the early days of CH, and have returned to volunteering with CH over the years.
What has kept you volunteering all this time?
The patients! My coworkers!
Do you remember your first day at CommunityHealth?
I don’t have a specific memory of the first day, but my impression was that CH attracted a passionate group of people who were committed to addressing health inequities.
What is something you’ve learned from CommunityHealth?
That pretty much nothing is impossible when a group of people put their minds and talents into achieving something.
How has CommunityHealth influenced your perception of health care?
CommunityHealth reinforces what is personally important to me about healthcare: that it be rooted in communities, culturally aware, and “meets people where they are.”
As the largest volunteer-based free health center in the nation, serving the uninsured, underserved, and undocumented, CommunityHealth is more than a free clinic but a true patient-centered medical home. Health care providers, both clinical and nonclinical, devoted to quality health care for all are encouraged to apply.