Health Care
EJI believes that access to high-quality health care is essential for reducing poverty and is a basic human right.
The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed the multiple challenges that poor people face when it comes to obtaining essential health care services. The problem is especially acute in Alabama, where many counties have no physicians and access to health care is extremely limited.
Our work with chronically ill people in Alabama’s prisons has exposed serious shortcomings in prison health care that lead to long term problems for people leaving prison. Many people who have been imprisoned in Alabama suffer from trauma, addiction, and a wide variety of untreated chronic medical diseases.
EJI is launching a program to provide health care services to poor and low-income people in Alabama. Our program is designed to directly address some of the biggest challenges for people leaving the state’s prisons.
We offer free health care services to people released from Alabama prisons and provide additional care and services to promote successful re-entry.
EJI believes that providing access to behavioral health services as well as treatment for chronic disease can have a huge impact on the likelihood of a successful re-entry for people leaving Alabama’s dangerous and violent prisons. This can reduce recidivism and increase public safety.
EJI Health Clinic
In 2023, EJI opened a health clinic in Montgomery to provide free health screenings and services to people released from jail or prison and services to other vulnerable populations in Alabama.
With hundreds of thousands of uninsured people in Alabama, access to health care remains a critical problem. People in Alabama die of chronic diseases that patients in other jurisdictions survive.
The mortality rate inside Alabama’s prisons is one of the highest in the country. People coming out of jails and prisons suffer from undiagnosed illnesses that can seriously compromise their health and successful re-entry.
EJI Health Clinic is available to any person recently released from jail or prison. Located in Montgomery, the clinic provides free screenings and limited care for a range of diseases and illnesses.
“It’s clear that we could improve public safety, reduce crime, and lower the recidivism rate if we focused more on health care for people in jails and prisons and those who are released,” EJI Director Bryan Stevenson said. “We believe EJI Health can make a positive contribution to helping people re-enter society and promote healthier communities and improved public safety.”
EJI’s mobile health clinic will improve health access for people in underserved areas across Alabama.
EJI Health also has a mobile clinic that travels to underserved areas across the state to provide health support and assistance to those in need.
Contact Us
For more information about the clinic or to schedule an appointment, people recently released from custody can call EJI Health at (334) 239-9740 or email [email protected].
EJI Health Team
We have a very talented team of health care providers to assist some of the most vulnerable people in Alabama.
Dr. Margaret Hayden and Dr. Sanjay Kishore are the first two full-time primary care physicians at EJI Health. Both are graduates of Harvard Medical School and completed their residencies at the prestigious Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
Ryan Pratt brings to the health clinic nearly 15 years of experience as a registered nurse following six years in the U.S. Air Force.
Social worker Laquarria Nevins provides additional re-entry support to clients who come through the clinic. Ms. Nevins has worked with people impacted by the criminal justice system both while incarcerated and after release for over two decades.
Health services are also managed by Dr. Maria Morrison, another licensed social worker, and Charlotte Morrison, a senior attorney at EJI with over 20 years of experience working with people coming out of jails and prisons.
The program took shape after months of work by the clinic’s full-time health managers, Mary Ellen Luck and Meghan Hunter, both of whom have years of health care management experience and graduate degrees in business from the Stanford Business School.
Legal and anti-poverty staff at EJI will work closely with the clinicians and patient-clients in providing multiple services.