Marcelo Isaak is a middleman making Chesapeake healthier.
A few years ago, Rotarians Stephen Beer and Kenny James approached Isaak, co-chair of the Rotary Club of Chesapeake’s international committee and international global grants. They had an idea: A mobile medical clinic.
“I accepted the challenge,” Isaak, a retired international industries manager, says, “and ran with it.”
Calls to Chesapeake Regional Healthcare connected Isaak with Phyllis Stoneburner. As executive director of Healthy Chesapeake, a non-profit dedicated to community wellness, she’s invited to Chesapeake Regional’s annual strategic planning sessions.
At one meeting, the team brainstormed ways to deliver healthcare to Chesapeake citizens unable to travel to a medical office.
“Not long after that, I got the call,” Stoneburner remembers about her conversation with Isaak. “Then I helped write the grant, and the mobile clinic was born.”
Usually Rotary Club grants are given to foreign countries. This time, the grant funds were incoming to mainland America from Rotary Clubs in Ghana, Germany, India and the Philippines. Other mid-Atlantic area Rotary Clubs contributed, too, and so did The Rotary International Foundation. the funds totaled $128,200.
In August 2024 , the Chesapeake Regional Healthcare Mobile Medical Clinic, with two exams rooms built on a 2023 Ford E450, hit the road. It was fueled with about $350,000 from the health system. Isaak credits SuAnne Bryant, another Rotarian, with pushing forward on the project after he launched it.
Chesapeake Regional Healthcare’s Director of Population Health Morgan Allen won’t measure the mobile clinic’s success just by counting patients. Other numbers matter. In the months to come, the clinic will set a schedule, stopping regularly in South Norfolk, Deep Creek and Western Branch, three areas Stoneburner found most in need of medical support after reviewing area health data.
Eventually, a nurse practitioner heading up the mobile clinic will add stops in rural areas of south Chesapeake and northeast North Carolina, communities Stoneburner also identified as underserved by easily accessible healthcare. The practitioner will track statistics such as the number of people counseled on the detriments of smoking, their A1C levels (a measure related to diabetes), their weight and their blood pressure—and all of the health indicators individuals ask their primary care provider to evaluate. Allen wants people to build a medical home they may not have realized they needed.
“Part of the benefit of having this mobile clinic as part of our integrated health system is we have lots of routes for follow up,” he says. “If a patient needs a specialist or imaging for follow up, we will be able to coordinate that care within our own medical group. We will really help them navigate the healthcare system and use the resources that we have right at hand to get them to the right place.”
He imagines supporting area businesses directly as well. After all, a healthy workforce drives healthy businesses.
“Are there even businesses where we could take the mobile clinic, say once a month, and support it?,” Allen considers. “That is something that we could certainly look at. In general, too, business owners, business leaders, certainly have a civic commitment to their community and their cities and towns where they live. The mobile clinic is going to be truly a benefit to those communities, the same communities that the businesses are impacting.”
