Mobile medical van offering women's health care coming to town

Elevation Women’s Health Care will send their mobile medical van to Thermopolis on Friday, August 12 from 1:30-4 p.m. to provide free pregnancy tests, ultrasound, and much more. Call 307-856-0999 for an appointment. Walk-ups are taken depending on the schedule.

Registered Nurse Courtney Patterson described their history and services and said, “Abba’s House was our original name. We did some rebranding and we’re now Elevation Women’s Health Care. We started in 1993 here in Riverton, and our executive director, Leilani Schrock, started in 2013. She got the idea that we provide services to women here in Fremont County and help them with any maternal needs during pregnancy and after the baby’s born.”

Patterson added, “we provide things like diapers, diaper wipes, formula, babies clothes, anything a baby would need a stroller, a car seat, a bouncy seat, anything like that. We do pregnancy testing and STI or, in my old woman’s terms, STD testing. Instead of sexually transmitted diseases, it’s sexually transmitted infections. We can do UTI testing. And we’ve been providing those services for women here in Fremont County and with a company called Save the Storks out of Colorado Springs, we had our mobile medical unit built with the idea of we are such a small population in Wyoming that we wanted to provide those services to outlying communities.”

Patterson continued and said, “And the way to do that is to take our office to them. And that’s where the mobile medical unit comes in. So we visit Lander, Arapaho, Dubois, Shoshone, Thermopolis, and Worland. And the reason that we’re going outside of Fremont County with Thermopolis and Worland is that we have people in those communities voicing to us that our services were needed in their communities.”

Elevation Women’s Health Care also provides parenting classes. Patterson said, “we had already started offering classes where we could send the class using technology. We can send it to their phone, to their email, and they can open it up and watch videos. Our parenting classes have been approved through the family court system. So, parents who have lost custody of children, can go through our parenting classes, take our parenting classes, and we can reunite families that way.

Patterson added, “So what Covid did was just accelerated that because now really we don’t have anybody coming in to watch our television with our DVDs or Internet having to watch our television. They can watch everything on their phone. And we don’t charge anything for any of the services that we provide. They can get everything for free, but obviously, none of this comes for free. So part of their skin in the game, so to speak, is earning points. And they can earn points by taking classes and they can take classes in pregnancy and infancy. From 0 to 3 months, how do you raise a kid? How do you discipline a kid? How do you handle terrible twos and that sort of thing? We have a huge selection of classes that we can offer them through. It’s called Break Course and then Hope Sync. I can provide them with medical classes in your pregnancy. What exactly is going on with your pregnancy? How is the baby developing? And they can also do the parenting side of it.”

Regarding Patterson’s motivation to provide these services, she said, “My part is the hope thing, which is being the nurse. I’m the one that deals with that end of it. And if they want to learn about parenting or take those classes to earn points, to be able to get whatever they want, then they can take those away on points and we can provide them with those supplies that they need. Now, obviously, with Thermopolis Dubois, Worland, I am going to be identifying people in those communities that can help me with those resources in their town.”

Elevation Women’s Health Care is funded by donations from individuals and businesses as a non-profit organization. Their office is located at 2420 Watt Court, Riverton, Wyoming 82501.