A community-based free nursing clinic's approach to management of health problems for the uninsured: the hepatitis C example.

Poverty, as an outgrowth of lack of opportunity in employment, basic education, affordable housing, and racism, directly affects disparities in health status. Health care providers are challenged to identify and overcome systemic barriers to health services for the poorest patients. This article describes the population of patients and the model of care offered by the Wald Community Nursing Center, a free nurse-managed clinic in Baltimore, Maryland. Hepatitis C infection is used to illustrate the confounding factors of a costly, chronic health problem and the interventions that have been instituted to overcome them.