The latest vehicle anticipating to hit the streets July 9 looks like a motor home – but has a much different purpose.
Life Choices is a pregnancy resource center that is serving Northern Colorado and part of the Denver Metro area by implementing a mobile medical unit that offers free, unlimited ultrasounds to women.
“We wanted to be able to go where women’s daily routines took them. And mobility was the answer,” said Executive Director Rick Thielen.
This is the first mobile medical unit in Colorado; however, it is about the 35th one that the company, Image Clear Ultrasound, based out of Akron, Ohio has developed.
It is also the first one with Spanish on the outside.
The unit is staffed by bilingual medical personnel, along with a full time nurse, registered nurses, two pediatricians, an obstetrician and a radiologist. All are volunteers.
The way that the location is determined for the mobile unit is based on visibility and lack of service within the four Life Choices communities of Westminster, Fort Lupton, Longmont and Loveland – the closest one to Fort Collins
Thielen explains that most people think the unit is an old van or a dumpy camper, but it is actually a 31-class motorhome, custom built for this purpose. It is a 2013 model.
A few hundred people have come through to visit it, which is great Thielen said, since they are all about promotion until they launch on July 9.
When they do go live with the unit, Thielen said that based on research, “We could see upwards of 25 to 30 women a week.”
Jenny Langness, executive director of a similar pregnancy resource center, The Alpha Center in Fort Collins, said that they were the ones to tell Life Choices about the development and implementation of the medical mobile unit.
Langness said that The Alpha Center is not looking into implementing a mobile unit because their focus is in the Fort Collins community and “we are already located here.”
According to Thielen, more services are projected in the future with 50 to 55 units anticipated to deploy at the end of this year – two of those being implementing in Africa.
Content producer Hannah Glennon can be reached at news@collegian.com.