Mazzoni Center
Title: Momentum at Mazzoni: How Integrated Care Empowers Philadelphia’s LGBTQ+ Community
Student Interns:
Zachary Beckman
Thomas Jefferson University, Sidney Kimmel Medical College
Lara Fougnies
Thomas Jefferson University, Sidney Kimmel Medical College
Grace Stanfield
Bryn Mawr College, Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research
Academic Preceptor:
Zoë Van Orsdol, MA, MPH
Thomas Jefferson University, College of Population Health
Community Preceptor:
Stefan Lynch, MS
Director of Nursing and Integrated Services, Mazzoni Center
Erme Maula, MS
Assistant Director of Adolescent Programs, Mazzoni Center
Community Site:
Mazzoni Center is Philadelphia’s largest comprehensive health and wellness center serving the LGBTQ+ community. Founded in 1979 through the Lavender Health Project, it has grown into a leading provider of integrated primary care, behavioral health, and social support services. Mazzoni Center’s mission is to improve the health and well-being of the LGBTQ+ community through compassionate, evidence-based, innovative care. Originally established to address the unique healthcare needs of the LGBTQ+ community, the center now serves the broader Philadelphia community through an inclusive, culturally humble, patient-centered approach.
The Bainbridge Street headquarters provides primary care, behavioral health, and social services. The Washington West location focuses on low-barrier sexual health services, including HIV prevention (PrEP and PEP), STI testing and treatment, contraceptive services, pregnancy testing, cervical and anal cancer screening, and immunizations.
Team’s Experience:
The Bridging the Gaps interns made an agency-wide Mazzoni resource guide that consolidated community resource information into a centralized, searchable database to improve coordination, accessibility, and long-term maintenance of information on community services and programs. The BTG interns created a health literacy zine series, “Tell Me About …”, that provided approachable, educational material on diabetes management, hormone replacement therapy, and the importance of having a PCP. The interns served as “greeters” at Youth Drop-In (YDI), welcoming prospective patients (18- to 25-year-olds) to Mazzoni, orienting them to available resources, and offering a space to do crafts and build community while they waited for appointments. They also assisted the community engagement staff in conducting community advisory boards. The BTG interns developed educational materials for medical assistants on cervical cancer prevention and proposed a new Pap smear screening workflow to improve care coordination between medical assistants and providers. Additionally, the interns surveyed medical assistants and registrars about challenges with the current PHQ workflow and supported subsequent professional development programming to improve it.
Reflections
Bridging the Gaps provided me with a deeper understanding of the role that health centers can play in people’s lives. The Mazzoni Center’s integrated care model for LGBTQIA+ folks demonstrates that we can strive to impact more than just the 20% of health that can be attributed to medical care. If, from under one roof, we can provide community members with more accessible medical, behavioral health, pharmaceutical, and food services, as well as supplemental resources to meet their other needs, we are better positioned to have a lasting effect. As I continue my education, I will carry this understanding, as well as the list of community resources we compiled while at the Mazzoni Center, with me in an effort to maximize my impact on the people and patients I encounter.
Zachary Beckman
Bridging the Gaps allowed me to see how the LGBTQ+ health disparities I learned about in the classroom are addressed in practice. I was struck by how at Mazzoni Center, providers often navigated healthcare processes that were not designed to reflect the diversity of their patients’ identities and lived experiences, making it challenging to deliver necessary evidence-based, patient-centered care. It inspired me to recognize that some of the most meaningful patient advocacy happens behind the scenes through improving workflows, EHRs, and other operational processes. This experience reshaped my understanding of equitable care by highlighting that meaningful change comes not only through individual patient interactions but also through improving the systems that support them. While diving into the operational details of healthcare may not be the glamorous side of medicine, those details determine whether patient-centered, evidence-based care can truly reach patients as intended.
Lara Fougnies
In my ‘greeter’ fashion during Youth Drop-In (YDI), I introduced myself to a patient who sat quietly in the corner of the room and invited her to the craft table. She shook her head and whispered that she was about to have a panic attack. I bent down and eased into conversation to see what she needed in that moment. After a beat, she asked if I would accompany her to the front desk. We proceeded to chat for 45 minutes, topics ranging from the transphobia she faces at work to her newborn kittens. While her appointment was rescheduled, she told me she still got what she needed just by talking with me. Before my BTG CHIP experience at Mazzoni, I never would’ve thought a role so small as ‘greeter’ could be considered healthcare. Throughout this summer, as a greeter at YDI and a facilitator at the Community Advisory Boards, I’ve come to see how these tiny moments accumulate and can make or break someone’s access to care.
Grace Stanfield
