#SpotlightOnCLT Health Equity
Each month, SHARE Charlotte provides a series of highlights on local nonprofits who are doing great work for a cause that may be close to your heart. We call this series #SpotlightOnCLT and we hope it helps you get involved in ways that matter most to you - you can attend events, donate, or volunteer! Most of all, our goal is for you to be more educated about issues in our city and region.
This January, SHARE Charlotte is highlighting nonprofit partners who are working to impact Health Equity in Charlotte. Their work involves removing obstacles to health, like poverty, discrimination, and lack of access to good jobs, quality education, housing, and healthcare.
We’re very thankful to the nonprofits below who are leading the charge in Charlotte to provide neighbors with improved access to health resources and outcomes. One of these amazing nonprofits is Hospitality House of Charlotte, who is partnering with us to present this important issue.
Note: By clicking the buttons for each organization, you can access contact information, volunteer interest forms, social media contacts, and upcoming events.
Hospitality House of Charlotte
Hospitality House of Charlotte's mission is to create community for patients connecting to vital medical care. Since 1985, HHOC advances equitable access to healthcare thorough private, low-cost accommodations in close proximity to Charlotte's world-class hospital systems. Our 20-bedroom facility offers housing and holistic health programming to patients of all ages and caregivers, ensuring access to vital medical treatment that is unavailable where they live.
American Cancer Society-Charlotte
While innovations in cancer prevention, detection, treatment, and survivorship have come a long way, not everyone has benefited equally. Research shows that while overall cancer mortality rates in the US are dropping, people who are marginalized or historically excluded continue to bear a disproportionate burden of preventable death and disease. To end cancer as we know it for everyone, we must advance health equity.
Anuvia Prevention and Recovery Center
Anuvia Prevention and Recovery Center has provided compassionate and effective care to Mecklenburg County residents for over 65 years, including short-term and long-term outpatient treatment for substance use and mental health, detox and residential substance use treatment, adolescent services, court services, medication management, and many evidence-based prevention programs for children and families. Most recently, we launched an Assertive Community Treatment Team that serves individuals who have serious mental health conditions and are at high risk for homelessness, repeated hospitalizations, and legal issues. Anuvia is committed to removing barriers to care and will not turn anyone away due to the inability to pay for services. Anuvia provided prevention services to 5,733 individuals and treatment to 4,379 people in FY 23-24.
Anuvia’s mental health and substance use services are urgently needed, especially among underserved populations in Mecklenburg County. By removing financial obstacles, breaking down stigma, and partnering with other organizations that help underserved populations, Anuvia reduces inequities in behavioral health care that addresses these issues.
Assist ME
Assist ME takes in gently used medical equipment (wheelchairs, tub transfer benches, etc) and gifts them to low income, uninsured patients. Everyone we serve is underserved for healthcare and 62% are people of color. We help these people regain their independence and we reduce their risk of falls and of being readmitted to the hospital.
Bee Mighty
Bee Mighty provides support and resources to local families before, during and after a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) journey. Bee Mighty provides NICU care packages, NICU support services, grants for mental health counseling and grants for developmental therapy and equipment.
Care Ring
Care Ring provides comprehensive medical care to those who are uninsured and low-income in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg community, so that no one has to go without care just because of an inability to pay. Care Ring also operates two maternal-child health programs that provide support through Community Health Workers and Nurses, which seek to eliminate disparities in health and quality-of-life outcomes for women of color and their infants.
Charlotte Speech and Hearing Center
CSHC provides access to superior speech-language and hearing services, regardless of income or other barriers, so that everyone in need can build their own pathways to success and to obtain a meaningful and enriched life. Our Hear to Help program provides brand new, digital and programmable hearing devices, and our Assistance Fund provides high-quality speech-language therapy services to those in need at a price they can afford. Lastly, our Community Language/ Literacy Impact Program (CLIP), which serves 2000+ preschool aged children each year, provides early identification and intervention services to promote kindergarten readiness for low-income and at-risk children.
Charlotte Trans Health
Charlotte Trans Health (CTH) is dedicated to providing competent, accessible, affirming healthcare to transgender and gender-diverse (TGD) individuals in the greater Charlotte area. We serve people of all ages across our practices and offer programs focused on un- and under-insured TGD individuals, ensuring they have access to comprehensive medical and mental health services. Our network of multidisciplinary professionals offers gender-affirming care, education, community support, and advocacy to reduce healthcare disparities. Through partnerships, training programs, and direct care, we advance health equity by breaking down barriers and fostering a compassionate healthcare environment that welcomes all.
Crittenton of North Carolina
Crittenton empowers women and children through education, health, residential care, and supportive services, working to reduce health disparities for some of the most vulnerable members of our community. We remove barriers of access to prenatal care for pregnant mothers experiencing homelessness and to trauma-informed mental health care for teenage girls and teenage mothers in foster care. By providing wraparound services for women and girls in need, Crittenton improves lifelong health outcomes for moms and infants, breaking generational cycles of poor health and abuse, creating a healthier community for all.
Matthews Free Medical Clinic
Matthews Free Medical Clinic is a free medical home for people that are low income, uninsured and living in Mecklenburg and Union Counties. We provide primary care, chronic disease management, women's health, GI, physical therapy, behavioral health, case management and much more.
Out of the Ashes Foundation
We serve families walking through grief after pregnancy loss, infant loss and infertility discovery by providing practical help, honoring the families and their babies and helping restore hope. Women from all ethnicities, backgrounds and socioeconomic statuses are impacted and often accrue high medical bills after a loss, serving as a constant reminder of their grief. Our organization provides a Medical Bill Relief Program so families can have their bills related to pregnancy loss, infant loss or infertility discovery paid for allowing them to focus their financial resources elsewhere. Additionally, we offer free couples' connection groups during the year with access to a counselor among other resources available to these women and families as they process life after loss.
Planned Parenthood South Atlantic
For more than 100 years, women, men, and youth have relied on Planned Parenthood for accessible affordable quality reproductive health care, accurate information, and comprehensive health education. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic (PPSAT) serves more than 55,000 patients annually at 14 health centers across North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia. PPSAT is committed to providing health care to everyone who walks through our doors, no matter their race, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, documentation, or insurance status. Services includes birth control, gender-affirming hormone therapy, abortion, pregnancy testing, STI testing and treatment, gynecological wellness visits, emergency contraception, and basic primary care. Our community health educators also reach thousands of youth each year with accurate sex-positive health information. Lastly, PPSAT works tirelessly with state legislators to protect access to health care for all.
Ronald McDonald House Charities of Greater Charlotte
Ronald McDonald House Charities of Greater Charlotte provides essential services that remove barriers, strengthen families, and promote healing when children need healthcare. RMHC provides families with sick or injured children with comfort and support through three main programs: The House Program; 28 bedrooms, all with private bathrooms, one meal a day!; The Family Room Program, respite and care just steps away from their child's bedside; and The Happy Wheels Program, hospitality carts that provide comfort items directly to a child's hospital room - all at not cost to families! In 2024, RMHC of Greater Charlotte provided services to over 6,000 families, prepared and served over 16,000 meals and baked over 22,000 cookies for families.
Steve Smith Family Foundation
The Steve Smith Family Foundation provides access to mental health and wellness services for all, regardless of age or health coverage. The foundation has opened Smith Family BHUC (Behavioral Health Urgent Care), providing mental health and substance use disorder services 24 hours, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
Strong Like AK
Inspired by the legacy of Adam Kincaid, Strong Like AK provides financial care to childhood cancer patients and their families, easing the burden of medical bills and daily expenses during treatment. Through the Strong Like AK House in Mount Holly, NC, we offer free, temporary housing—a home away from home—for families traveling to Charlotte for care at Levine Children’s Hospital. By addressing these critical needs, we remove financial barriers and ensure families can focus on what matters most: their child’s healing.
Teen Health Connection
Teen Health Connection is the leading provider of integrated medical and behavioral healthcare for adolescents and young adults ages 11 through 25. Our mission is to improve the health of adolescents by providing adolescent medicine and behavioral health services, education, advocacy, leadership development, and research through connections among adolescents, parents, and the community. Our multidisciplinary team of experts empower every adolescent to be healthy, safe, and successful.
Women's Health and Resilience Foundation
The Women's Health and Resilience Foundation empowers women by providing free women's health-focused educational sessions in the community, free exercise classes, and support programs that address the unique health challenges they face. We serve women of all backgrounds, including those undergoing cancer treatment, with resources that build resilience and foster community. By removing barriers to wellness and creating accessible, supportive spaces, we are helping to advance health equity for women in our community.
