Volunteer
Volunteers are crucial to every aspect of managing the Health Wagon, and we appreciate everything they do for us! Volunteers staff and run our office, handle maintenance, cleaning, and landscaping duties, and provide medical and dental care at our freestanding and mobile clinics.
How You Can Help in Our Office
- Data entry, photocopying, filing
- Answering phones
- Compiling statistics, helping with reports
- Cleaning, painting, landscaping
- Conducting pre-exam interviews
How You Can Help Provide Care
Medical and dental professional volunteers are always needed to care for our patients for one- to three-week stints. During your tour, you will be working both in our standalone and mobile clinics. Our patients are incredibly appreciative of the care our volunteers provide to them.
To help us provide medical or dental services to our patients, start by applying for a temporary Virginia license if you are not already licensed in the state (dental volunteers no longer need a temporary license). Your temporary license must be valid for the dates of your volunteer service. All volunteer licensed health providers with a current or temporary Virginia license are covered for liability under the Division of Risk Management program (Virginia Code 54.1-106) at no cost. This includes only medical malpractice.
Please also complete our Volunteer Request form. A typical one-week clinic schedule includes visits to our freestanding clinics as well as our mobile clinics throughout the region. Your evenings and weekends are free, so you can enjoy the beautiful scenery of Southwest Virginia’s mountains during your stay. We encourage our medical volunteers to bring their families, who can experience the fulfillment of volunteering in our clinics as well! Each volunteer pays for his or her own travel, lodging, and activity expenses.
Medical volunteer tourism in Southwest Virginia is a tax-deductible way to provide medical care to underserved patients while touring a part of the country many people never have the opportunity to see.
For more information, call our volunteer coordinator at (276) 328-8850.
More Ways to Help
The Health Wagon conducts outreach events throughout the year called Move Mountains Medical Missions (M7). These events include dental, vision, medical, advanced diagnostics, veterinary, social, and spiritual services. We need volunteers of all kinds – whether you are a clinician or prefer general support tasks, we have a place for you! To register, submit a Volunteer Request form.
