St. Tammany Health System’s newest public health tool has arrived, and it’s the sort of thing that’s hard to miss.
It’s 40 feet long, it’s got an 80-gallon gas tank, and it’s fully loaded with the latest preventative health screening equipment.
It’s the Be Well Bus, a custom-built motorcoach locals can expect to see at community gatherings, employer-sponsored health fairs and all manner of other local events.
STHS Community Health Coordinator Anne Pablovich recently visited The Lake 94.7-FM to talk about the bus and to urge listeners to schedule those preventative health screenings they might have put on hold during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Listen to Anne’s conversation with Charles Dowdy of The Lake in the embedded audio player below or at The Lake website. You can also scroll down to read an edited transcript of their conversation.
Charles Dowdy: We’ve got guests in the studio. St. Tammany Health System’s Anne Pablovich is here. … So, what do you do for the hospital?
Anne: I am community health coordinator for the hospital.
Charles: And today we’re going to talk about what?
Anne: We’re going to talk about the Be Well Bus.
Charles Dowdy: Tell me what the Be Well Bus is.
Anne: The Be Well Bus is our mobile health unit, and we’re so excited that it’s finally here. It’s been a long time coming, but it’s here, we’re getting it ready to get out in the community. We’ve already been out at one community event and (we’re) getting it ready to get it out to a bunch of others.
Charles: You’re probably not going to tell me this, but what does a Be Well Bus cost? Because I was talking with some people about this and the technology on this bus is incredible.
Anne: It’s very, very advanced. I will tell you that the mammography equipment on the bus is half the cost of the bus.
Charles: Wow. And that’s on the back of the bus?
Anne: Yes
Charles: So the idea is, when you’re driving the bus, be very careful.
Anne: (Laughs) Please don’t hit my bus! I will go into a tailspin!
Charles: So what is on the bus? Tell me about it.
Anne: We have a full mammography suite where you can get 3-D mammography screenings. We have a full exam room, so that really, really sets us apart in terms of what we’re able to offer on this bus. We can do a really wide variety of different services, not just cancer related – although we can do a wide array of cancer screenings on the bus – but this allows us to do a few other things. It gives you some privacy and separate space to kind of double up your services.
Charles: So the idea is you’re going to take this bus and basically take healthcare out and about in the community.
Anne: Exactly. We’ll be located at a lot of our clinic locations … just (for) the convenience factor of people coming in. They’re getting their well check, they’re seeing their primary care provider: “Oh, by the way, the bus is going to be on-site. Do you want to have your mammogram, get that taken care of without having to drive 30 minutes to the next imaging center, and just knock it all out in one?”
So we’ll have it at all of our clinic locations on a rotating schedule. We’re also going to be at some of our partner Ochsner’s clinic locations, so we’ll be able to capture some of their needs as well.
Charles: Do they let you drive the bus?
Anne: No! No indeed! (Laughs) That sucker’s 40 feet long!
Charles: Yeah. Let’s talk about this, though. I want to be sure to stress this: What’s unique and different about this is, it’s kind of like a – and you may come around and hit me – it’s kind of like a Swiss Army knife. You can put different things in there to make it do different things, right?
Anne: Exactly. We can customize it, tailor it for specific events, for specific audiences and the screenings we want to offer, the services we want to offer. Like I said before, it’s got that full exam room in it, and so we can do skin cancer checks, head and neck cancer checks, but we can (also) do carotid ultrasounds, AAA (abdominal aortic aneurysm) ultrasounds.
Charles: So you’re just going to use it just in a ton of different ways.
Anne: It’s going to be a different event every time we’re on the bus.
Charles: That’s cool, and I guess the question I wanted to ask a minute ago is, are we going to use this in events? If events are going to happen, we want that front and center?
Anne: Absolutely. We’re going to be at a few events, actually, coming up. We’re going to be at the Celebrate St. Tammany event that’s going to be at Pelican Park on July 17. We’re doing a vaccine clinic there. We’ll also have first aid capabilities so that if anybody has an issue, we’re there to support the event that way. We’ll be at the Abita Springs Farmers Market on Sunday, August 1. This is kind of our first public event that we’re putting together, and (we’re) excited to be part of that event, that opportunity. We’ll be at White Linen Night, we’ll be at the Madisonville Wooden Boat Festival. So we’re able to provide a lot of different services on the bus. We’ll serve as the first aid station, cooling station, but we’ll also have a lot of education material and do our outreach there as well.
Charles: So a lot of times when people see one of these buses, they’re like, “That’s for this” or, “That’s for that,” but this one, you can’t really define it that way.
Anne: Yeah. Mammography is obviously a huge component, and that’s one of the biggest services that we’ll be providing on it, but that’s not the only service.
Charles: We’re talking with Anne, we’re talking about the Be Well Bus at St. Tammany Health System and, boy, she knows this bus. You spent a lot of time thinking about this bus. Gas tank’s how big?
Anne: It’s an 80-gallon diesel gas tank.
Charles: You do know a lot about it. You lived with this thing.
Anne: It was a very detailed process. It took us 10 months to build it. We were very, very involved in just about every aspect. We laid out the floorplan of how the rooms were going to be configured, we made some changes. So it’s a custom unit.
Charles: And where do we want to go? Who are you talking to right now?
Anne: We want to go everywhere. We want to go to, as I said, our clinic locations. We want to get out to community events. But also we want to go to employers and make it as easy as possible for employees to get all their preventative care. So if you’re having an employee health fair any time soon, reach out, see if it’s something that we can make it for. We can bill through insurance. We have cash-rate specials that we’re offering on the bus. It’s so versatile. And we hope to capture everyone that needs to get their early detection and prevention screenings.
Charles: The Be Well Bus – it’s new, and the idea basically is this thing can do a little bit of everything. It’s not one-size-fits-all. And you’re looking for opportunities to use this thing.
Anne: Absolutely. If anybody’s got an employee health fair coming up, if you’ve got a community event you’re putting together and think this might be an asset to the event, please reach out to me. I would love to have it out at your event, at your place of employment. My email is apablovich@stph.org, or you can go to BeWellBus.health and get my contact info there as well.