Even with all of the important work it does, perhaps one of the most important jobs of the Western Tidewater Free Clinic is to tell its story to get more people involved.

Thankfully, local organizations like the Junto Woman’s Club, which welcomed clinic Executive Director Chet Hart as guest speaker this week, are giving the clinic a chance to do just that.

The clinic needs more people to learn about its services, both so that it can bolster its volunteer and donor rolls and so that more people who need the clinic’s services will know about them and be able to avail themselves of the things it offers.

Hart gave the woman’s club a rundown of all the things the clinic does at their meeting Monday at St. John’s Parish Hall. The club, in turn, had a bevy of donations for the clinic, including office supplies, snacks for volunteers, cleaning products and other items, in addition to a $200 donation given back in January.

By the numbers, the clinic is impressive:

12 years of service to the community

2,200 square miles served, including Suffolk, Franklin and Isle of Wight, Southampton, Surry and Sussex counties

200 clinic volunteers

$8.6 million in free medications distributed last year

1,627 individual patients last year

19,422 unique visits last year

Furthermore, about 40 percent of clinic patients have been attending for three or more years, making it clear that this is a vital resource not only for people in crisis but also for people struggling long-term. For those people, especially, the clinic is an important safety net agency to help meet their health care needs, which otherwise likely would be treated by repeated visits to the emergency room or not at all.

The state’s recently expanded Medicaid program affects only about 30 percent of clinic patients, also demonstrating that the clinic is still sorely needed.

We appreciate the Junto Woman’s Club for its generosity and social awareness and the Western Tidewater Free Clinic for its many years of service.