Our Diaspora Mobile Clinic Project 

The Mobile Medical Clinic (MMC) concept was introduced by Ghana Ex-Servicemen Association Hamburg e. V (GESAH) in 2020 in cooperation with Meine Diaspora e. V.  and YAPA Germany e.V to help provide healthcare to underserved African community and other minority communities in Hamburg. With sponsorship from BürgerStiftung Hamburg the concept was magnificently launched in September 2021 at Horner Rennbahn Hamburg under the program African Community Strategic Leadership meeting. The meeting developed a standardized framework for engaging with African communities and the potential stakeholders in Hamburg. The meeting also documented and outlined the services that were going to be provided at the Mobile Medical Clinic and explained the roles and responsibilities for each stakeholder. Some of the key strategic areas of the intervention included:

• Eliminating structural barriers eg uninsured.
• Community health education and health promotion
• linking community access to primary healthcare
• Healthy eating and active living. This improves diet and increase physical activities. It reduces rates of childhood obesity and adult obesity

Our Views and Opinions

The primary aim of this mobile medical clinic is to reduce the healthcare disparities in the African community. Our objectives include help to provide medical services better tailored to our African populations and health systems more community oriented. It also includes ability to apply knowledge, experiences and opportunity for community leadership development and capacity building. The gap between the ability to have access to healthcare system and the inability to have access to care is widening. We want to implement this project which is now necessary as ever and never do we see the healthcare gap as normal in a developed society where every important tools are available to access effective healthcare. It is a challenge we want to take on because it is not easy to see many loved ones in the community loosing their lives when death could have been prevented. We believe we can leverage resources that can help promote health equality in society. We have looked at different options such as a fixed-site clinic or practice which could be operated by the African doctors and nurses. However, the mobile Medical Clinic is more convenient as it would pull up in the comfort zones of our clients and also at their convenient time. We have the opportunities to bring the African community members together especially the doctors and nurses of the association; Black in medicine.

The distinctive characteristic of this Mobile Medical Clinic is the informality, relative to other more institutional healthcare facilities. For some patients, including immigrants, low-income residents and others, fixed-site clinics and medical centers can sometimes feel intimidating. The Mobile Medical Clinic will offer greater ease of entry with a more intimate setting, less paperwork to fill out, and a corresponding degree of anonymity. Even the fact that the Mobile Medical Clinic will come to patients' own neighborhood or one which they are comfortable and familiar, lowers not only a geographic barrier but a psychological one.

We will also consider the assets and resources currently available in the African community that can be mobilized to address health issues. The following make the idea Mobile Medical Clinic very specific for the African Community Hamburg:

• Human resources: examples are individual expertise, training and skills of residents, professional groups, faith-based groups, associations and business community.
• Physical resources: We have, for example, locations that are accessible to the community population and provide public space and meeting rooms. ie there are over 100 churches and mosques in the community.
• Information resources: We have informal networks of communications, media houses, information portals and social media platforms.
• Political Resources: Elected and appointed officials who advocate for resources and policy changes.

There are individual groups such as the African German Network Association (AGNA) which used to host health education annually for our community. Ghana Catholic Mission also has interest and was trying to organize health education and health screening in churches in the community. They had a one-time basis or as a special event health program. It did not include permanent health services. We therefore recognized the need for all the actors to come together and be a part of one health promotion strategy. They all welcome this project as a noble idea and have joined hands in implementing the project. We believe that our budget and the timing are realistic. We have got right people to lead the management team either as paid staff or volunteers who are residents in our African community.

More community experts including health professionals, advocates, to implement the Mobile Medical Clinic. The MMC will have greater impact such as the following in the African community: low death rate, low chronic disease, low hospital re-admission rates, low emergency department utilization and hospitalization, and low a larming rates of mental related problems. We believe that African community which is underserved has fewer options for access into the healthcare system and represent a population that would benefit most from the deployment of Mobile Medical Clinic. This project will improve our health care and there are severe consequences if we do not intervene the desperate situation now. low emergency department utilization and hospitalization, and low a larming rates of mental related problems. We believe that African community which is underserved has fewer options for access into the healthcare system and represent a population that would benefit most from the deployment of Mobile Medical Clinic.

This project will improve our health care and there are severe consequences if we do not intervene the desperate situation now. low emergency department utilization and hospitalization, and low a larming rates of mental related problems. We believe that African community which is underserved has fewer options for access into the healthcare system and represent a population that would benefit most from the deployment of Mobile Medical Clinic. This project will improve our health care and there are severe consequences if we do not intervene the desperate situation now.