On the Move for Her Health
October 21, 2025 | Episode 49
Producer’s Note: The following is an AI-generated transcript of The Wellness Conversation, an OhioHealth Podcast
SPEAKERS: Lindsey Gordon, Marcus Thorpe, Sana Booker, Dr. Jennifer Roncone
Lindsey Gordon 0:14
When you think about it, it takes a lot to stay on top of your health. You have to find a doctor, you have to see if you have coverage, book the appointment, get to the appointment, it's a lot.
Marcus Thorpe 0:22
And for women, especially in underserved communities, all of these steps are huge hurdles, and they are barriers. That's why many women never get the care they need. Thanks for joining us for this episode of the wellness conversation in OhioHealth Podcast. I'm Marcus Thorpe
Lindsey Gordon 0:37
and I'm Lindsay Gordon, but OhioHealth is making moves literally, to change that one neighborhood at a time before we dive in, please make sure to follow subscribe and rate our podcast. We really appreciate it. Joining us today to talk about why we are on the move. For her is Sana Booker and Dr. Jennifer Roncone, thank you both so much for being with us. Thank you so Sana. Let's start with you. Tell us about wellness on wheels, explain what it is and describe for the listeners what it looks like for someone who has never seen it before.
Sana Booker 1:11
So wellness on wheels is actually a large truck that we've converted into a mobile health center. So when you walk on the truck. Part goes away. It's beautiful. Our largest mobile unit is a semi, seven rooms. So inside there's two exam rooms, two counseling rooms, two bathrooms, a big, huge waiting area and a registration area. And so once you're inside, we have everything a doctor's office would have our own ultrasound machine. We draw our own blood work. Our staff is very comfortable for the staff. It's not crowded. So most people will think, is it going to be roomy? Is it going to be crowded? No, it's very nice. So it's just like a doctor's office on wheels.
Marcus Thorpe 1:53
If you live in central Ohio, or you work in central Ohio, you've probably seen it. It is huge, and you can't miss it. I mean, the signage and the work that you do is really incredible. Dr. Roncone, a women's health physician, I know you work hard in this space and care so much about the women that we serve every day. Tell us how you're involved with wellness on wheels.
Dr. Roncone 2:15
So I have the privilege of being involved in direct patient care. So I see patients on the mobile unit, and I also traveled to five out of the eight of our central Ohio sites, directly interacting with patients. I'm fortunate enough to have a great team of people to help me do that. We have a driver, we have a nurse, we have community health workers, social workers, and we just have an opportunity to really have an impact in the community. So directly, caring for the women is truly a privilege for me. I also serve as medical director of the Women's Health Wellness on Wheels program, and there I work alongside our leaders and make sure we're providing the best care for our patients. One of the leaders is on a booker?
Marcus Thorpe 3:01
Yeah, So with so much ground to cover so many women that need the services that are offered, and we're going to get into those services and kind of what they mean for women, how do you determine where you're going to go? You don't have, you know, 50 different trucks. You have a certain amount that you have to do, and you want to make sure you hit all the right places. So when you're mapping out where you're going to go or how you're going to do it, how do you determine those kind of things?
Sana Booker 3:24
Sana, at first, 32 years ago, it was who was our partner. We had to find a partner, community partner, and that was Columbus City Schools. So that's where we started, first focusing on teen pregnancy. Now we focus on celebrate one zip codes in the city of Columbus, unfortunately, there is zip codes where women don't have access to care, or it's very hard for them to get to a hospital. Also those zip codes, unfortunately have the highest infant mortality rates, so the death of a baby before their first birthday. So we want to break down those barriers so we are in every celebrate one zip code the mobile unit goes.
Marcus Thorpe 4:02
Wow. And how many are in the fleet?
Sana Booker 4:04
We have three mobile units in central Ohio, and one of those mobile units is belongs to the March of Dimes, but we staff it and operate it. In Southeast Ohio, we have two mobile units, and one also is, belongs to March of Dimes and we operate it.
Lindsey Gordon 4:19
It's really exciting to see that finances are a barrier for many people, not just, you know, not just women, all people to seek health care. So let's talk a little bit about that. If someone's listening to this today and thinking, Gosh, I could totally benefit from this, but I don't have health insurance, what would you say?
Sana Booker 4:41
Come to us, no barriers, regardless of your insurance status, regardless if you have a co pay. We want women to have care. That's our number one priority. So we take women who don't have insurance, women who might have a very high deductible, and they wait because of that deductible, well, we don't want that. We want them to. Get early prenatal care, the earlier the better. Dr Ron, come go all and the reasons why that's so important to get early prenatal care. So it's very, very important. And over the years, we've had so many partners in our community that has supported us, when us on wheels, to make sure we do see those women.
Marcus Thorpe 5:17
I know that Ohio Health talks a lot about bringing care close to home. And so I think wellness on wheels, you talk about something that checks the box of wanting to do that you're out in the community, you're going to the people that need this that can't get to you all the time. So Dr, Ron cone, let's talk about what services women and families can find whenever they do, find where you're going to be, and I guess the reaction when they come in and see this huge operation in this vehicle, it's got to be pretty impressive for them to walk in and go, I can get everything right here that I need.
Dr. Roncone 5:51
It is, it's it's profound. So we are actually like pillars of strength in their community. Our truck is a statement there. We provide comprehensive prenatal care, postpartum care. We provide pregnancy ultrasounds. We do all of their lab testing. We provide immunizations from the gynecologic standpoint. We do cervical cancer screenings, we do cervical cancer immunizations. We do a lot of preventative services for our women and get them connected to mammograms, colonoscopies and other appropriate screening tests for their age. We also connect them to community resources, we address food insecurity, we address transportation issues, and we have interpretive services, so it's very comprehensive care. I'm a women's health provider, but once our patients get through that post partum time, we are also fortunate enough to connect them with our primary care program. So it doesn't really stop with the pregnancy. So once they come on board, we take care of those patients, and we're part of their pregnancy journey, and then their life beyond that.
Marcus Thorpe 7:05
Are a lot of the women that come in. Is it maybe the first time that they've seen a physician? Is it? Is it brand new for them? I mean, even if they're far along in a pregnancy, and you know that they probably should have seen somebody before, then maybe they're a couple months into their pregnancy is sometimes that's the first time that they've actually been examined to make sure that they're in a good spot. The baby's in a good spot. Is that true? Is that what you're seeing?
Dr. Roncone 7:30
That's very true, and a typical scenario for us would be a patient that really was seeking care but just couldn't get there. So once they are connected with us, they call our office or find us on the website. Once we get them in, we lift the barriers that would have prevented them to coming sooner.
Marcus Thorpe 7:50
I just think about the baby's outcomes and the potential for them to have something go terribly wrong because they haven't been seen, or the mom's blood pressure is out of control, and not being seen can be so dangerous for them and the baby. It's got to be so rewarding for you all to just get people plugged into education plus services that are going along with it. Is that the most rewarding part of your job is that you know you're making things better for the mom, the family and the baby.
Dr. Roncone 8:19
It is the reward is the result, and it really brings me back to the heart of why one to become a physician. We are able to build trust in these communities. We're able to build relationships, and we leave no women behind. So by lifting these barriers and taking all comers, we improve outcomes, and we see that on maternal and fetal infant or maternal and infant morbidity and mortality.
Lindsey Gordon 8:46
I think too, also, when we talk about those transportation barriers, right, if it was hard to get there before baby, it's going to be even more difficult to get into a doctor's office with baby, because you have to have a means of transportation. You have to have to have the car seat all these things, and that's where I mean, you even step in and help in those situations when needed as well. I mean, it really is amazing. The detail I did have a day we were talking about this before we started recording, but there was a day almost a year ago. It'll be about a year ago when this podcast releases that I spent a day with Sana and the team, and we were at the fleet in one of our Columbus Neighborhoods. And it was so amazing to see, you know, person after person, patient after patient, mostly women. That day, it was the mom and baby unit, and so exciting to see some little babies like six weeks old, maybe even three weeks old, and the gratitude that these patients had for this program and the care and compassion and no judgment whatsoever. Sana, will you speak to that piece a little bit about just the environment we talked about, like, what it. Looks like the nuts and bolts, but there's a different feel to this.
Sana Booker 10:05
I definitely agree. So that site is on the far east of Columbus. It's our partner is a directions for youth on Kimberly Parkway. So I remember that, and they were excited that we were there. And the women in that neighborhood, it's, it's kind of sad, because if you look at that neighborhood, and I live actually only 15 minutes away from that neighborhood, the neighborhood has changed a lot, and medical care is not there. It is truly a medical desert. And so when we pull up, we pull up for prenatal care, women's care, and we also pull up for primary care, and they come the very first day we were there, we had four walk ons. So people in that neighborhood, they need us, and we need to actually probably expand in that neighborhood, and we're looking at that right now. So women come on our mobile unit, and it's almost like a welcoming party, like they're there and we're here, and in the two of us together, will make a very good outcome for you. So it's good, good that you're here. No judgment zone. If you're late to care, you still need to come. You still need to come. So we can draw your blood and get you ready to have this baby. But our goal is first trimester, as Doctor Brown cone said, and so with us being out for so many years, word of mouth has got out yet now, so many people know where we are. We're in every neighborhood that Columbus needs us in, and we're so proud that OhioHealth has supported us over the years, and many different we have grants that has helped us over the years. Different partnerships have helped us over the years, and we're so glad that we sustained this program.
Lindsey Gordon 11:46
It's crazy to think too that I know I'm fairly new to the Ohio Health team still, but when I was learning about wellness on wheels, I learned how it's truly something that sets a standard for other healthcare organizations across the country. I mean, do you have other organizations reach out and say, Hey, how did you overcome this hurdle? Or how'd you how'd you move ahead with this? I mean, you really are paving new road. I had to use that pun. I had to.
Sana Booker 12:20
We get a call at least once a month. We had have for years now. How did you do it? Most mobile units through the country. We're a one stop, and we are not. We're their medical home. So a lot of people call us throughout the country. How do you do that? What's your medical record look like? How do you do continuity of care? You actually do blood work. There is other mobile units trying to do the whole comprehensive, and it's okay, if they can do a piece of it, at least they're touching that lady and get her into somewhere. But to break down where a woman doesn't have to go anywhere else to get her blood work. Dr Ron cone, as she said, Does the ultrasound right there? Some women have to travel to get the ultrasound done. That's all that doesn't happen with us. So people call us all the time we've had. I can't tell you how many people have actually flown here, driven here to see us, go around and see what we do. How do we do it? So we didn't realize we were making and creating the best practice model in United States. We are featured every year at the National mobile health conference. This year, we're featured again, and it's because we're very unique, and we're trying to get other people to have confidence, to go ahead and do confidence.
Marcus Thorpe 13:34
Humble brag you were on Good Morning America, talking about it. You're a big deal, Sana.
Sana Booker 13:39
I mean, I'm just I'm blessed and highly favored. And like Dr Bronco said, the team is phenomenal. And Lindsay, you met the team. I know the team really is amazing. Engaging with our patients sometimes maybe too much, but we love our patients. We want them to have the best outcomes ever. Most of our moms come back to us. I mean, these women are now professional women writing it again. They remembered us when they didn't have insurance or they were a team. They come back to us. Yeah. So that's that tells us, right there, that we're doing a good job.
Lindsey Gordon 14:14
What you do today Sana is a totally different pace than what you started doing when you started with Ohio Health. So for you, you've had a long journey to get to this point, but I feel like there's value in everything you did ahead of time so that you can apply it to this mobile work. So if you kind of want to just quickly give us a rundown, because it's really cool. I mean, what you've done with Ohio Health?
Sana Booker 14:36
Well, I moved from Southeast Ohio, and I was a heart nurse for one year, and then immediately went to grant er and became an ER trauma nurse. And that opened the door for me to see the community, because I was not from Columbus, but through that nine year experience in the ER, I was able to see the community come to me, and I learned that community. Different pockets that our patients were coming from, and so that set me up for something like this. And so when I was approached to start this phenomenal program in 1992 I was approached, and I was like, I'm going to do what on a on a truck, and what would you okay? I'll do it. And so it was great. Was East High School, South High School. And I'll never forget that. I'll never forget that opportunity. Here I am still today.
Marcus Thorpe 15:31
What a journey, huh? That's really neat. We spent the last year of this podcast on the wellness conversation, talking about women's health, and the one thing I think that stands out the most is the importance of that personalized relationship that you have with your provider. I'm curious, Dr Ron Cohen, from your perspective, a lot of women in general, when they go to their OB, GYN, or they have that relationship, it's something that they've built over years, and there's a trust factor that goes along with that. Your situations are very different, where they don't have that long term relationship. So how much of those early visits are earning their trust, making sure they're comfortable with you and your team, that they feel safe, that they feel heard, and those kind of things, and how much of your early work is that, versus just getting right into, hey, here's what we're seeing, here's what we need to work on. Is it a lot of the trust in the early stages for you and your team?
Dr. Roncone 16:32
I would say the majority of our early visits are building trust. So I think it's really important. And I think the trust is built with not judging anybody and meeting everyone where they are, like we start building that trust when we pull that truck in their neighborhood. We've met them where they are. We've lifted a barrier. It's an unspoken barrier that was lifted because we're just there, but they sense that once they step on their clinical health is extremely important for me to address, and we certainly do that for mothers and babies, but then we delve right into the social determinants of health, and having community health workers and social workers to do that is invaluable in my private practice, I was always hesitant to address Some of those questions with patients, because I didn't really have the resource to provide for them. Now, when they step on this mobile unit, they go into an office and meet with a social worker, they can comfortably share their story and tell us what they need in a very non judgmental way. And I think we're improving the lives of families. By doing that, we truly walk with these women on a journey, and in addition to walking them through pregnancy and their postpartum care even afterwards, all of their family planning and reproductive counseling and all of those things we still take care of, and one service that a lot of people that are doing startup mobile units reach out to us about is, how do you do long acting, reversible birth control options? How are you doing that on your mobile unit? And we do all of those options right on our mobile unit.
Lindsey Gordon 18:17
Wow. I was going to ask you to like, what what is your hope for the future? What do you envision in the next five years, 10 years? How can this improve from here? Where are there still gaps?
Dr. Roncone 18:29
I think we just need to keep getting patients. We need to find the patients that need us, and we need to take care of them. And we're hopeful that our expansion to Southeast Ohio offers us that opportunity. We're always looking for more opportunities in central Ohio for expansion, and we're continuing to do that, but we just want to meet the patients that need us the most.
Lindsey Gordon 18:53
What I think is really exciting too. It's an opportunity to mention this as well as the mobile health locator app. Of course, not everyone has a smartphone, and that's why that signage at the community centers is still so important. However we are, I know, actively working with, you know, other healthcare organizations in our central Ohio, little health ecosystem to build this mobile health app. And it's still in progress. It's available now. I downloaded it. We actually sent out a news release about it with Nationwide Children's a couple months ago. So it's out there, it exists, but it's in you know, progress of getting better, and I think that's one step in getting, you know, out there to more patients, making it more accessible. And with that, it makes it easy to find appointments, schedule appointments. But for wellness on wheels, typically, do you need to schedule an appointment ahead of time? Or can you just walk on if you see it in your neighborhood?
Dr. Roncone 19:45
We always welcome you to walk on. We're not necessarily a walk in clinic, but once you walk on and we know what you need, sometimes we get people that have primary care needs that walk on to the women's health mobile unit, and we simply refer them. To our primary care program. So walking on is certainly an option, and we can help you get established with the right clinic and get you an appointment for what you need. We just want to emphasize like we are truly a doctor's office on wheels, so we really function that way. We can be reached through our website or direct phone call, and we have separate phone calls for our central Ohio locations and our Southeast Ohio locations.
Marcus Thorpe 20:27
Yeah, and we're going to put all the information inside the body of this story. So when you're on ohiohealth.com and you're reading the transcripts, we'll have all that information inside of this. I think one of the most underrated things that I've pulled out from this conversation is not just the care that you provide right then and there, which I think obviously is critically important. But I loved what you said that this is a step into overall wellness too, of connecting them into the primary care world and and getting them a physician that they can see how important is it for the continuum of somebody's care beyond just the here and now I'm pregnant, or I just had a baby, to make sure that they're plugged in as that baby grows into a toddler and a teen, and those kind of things, is that a huge part of what you're trying to do here is make sure that they're plugged into overall wellness.
Sana Booker 21:16
Absolutely. Unfortunately, we've seen more women with hypertension. Postpartum issues, and so when they come to us before they have their baby, the staff is excellent into making sure we tie them already into primary care. Yeah, some women actually will go to both they're still pregnant, but we send them to primary care because, number one, maybe their husband needs to go. We're trying to get the whole family healthy. So it's very important to make sure that someone, all of us, need a primary care doctor for many reasons, and we shouldn't wait till we get sick to find a primary care doctor. That's right. And so we are encouraging that, and it's great that we have seven clinics a week for primary care here in central Ohio, so we can plug them in once again, into their neighborhood. They don't have to go far. They just don't know that it exists sometimes. So we make sure that they are aware of our locations.
Marcus Thorpe 22:14
I love that.
Lindsey Gordon 22:15
I want to add too. We just expanded the fleet in Southeast Ohio, and that's I saw Sana last At that celebration. And we had, I can share this because she signed the consent form and everything, but we had a great patient share her story that day, and she basically said, Listen, I didn't have trust in doctors before this. And I thought, wow. Like to stand up there and say that, you know, and this mobile unit changed her outlook on her health journey for the entire rest of her life, going forward and for her family. And she actually had a great story too, because the unit had had sort of a soft opening. It was functioning and up and running, and she had heard about it from word of mouth. She was pregnant, and had it was five months pregnant. Hadn't seen a doctor yet, and so she went to the unit and stepped on board, and the team was surprised to see her, and she was surprised to see them, because she was their very first patient. And so they're like, oh, it's go time. We have somebody. Let's go. And so it was so nice for her to share that story at the event. We can actually, we can actually link to her story. Keeley wrote up a nice news room story about it. So we'll, we'll link that in here too, if you want to, anyone wants to go and read it, but it was, it just spoke volumes about this, is it? This is why you're here. This is the goal. And here's someone who felt seen, she had no insurance, and she was pointed in the right direction, and she had her baby, and she did, oh, my God, that baby was so good, too. That baby did not cry. I was shocked. I know.
Sana Booker 23:45
That's why we're here.
Lindsey Gordon 23:45
That's right. That's right.
Marcus Thorpe 23:45
Go to wellness on wheels. Your baby won't cry. That's a guarantee. That's true. I tell you what it's it's amazing work that you, I bet you don't have a tough time getting people to staff this wellness on wheels, because it is such a special place. What a neat thing that you're doing for these communities that are underserved, and we hope that people find you and take advantage of the amazing services that are available. We want to thank you both for joining us on the wellness conversation. It's been a really great chat. We appreciate it.
Dr. Roncone 24:16
Thank you for having us.
Marcus Thorpe 24:18
And, before we wrap up, a note for our listeners, if there's health and wellness topics that you would like for us, would like for us to cover, we definitely want to hear from you. You can drop us a comment in our shows and also like and subscribe. It certainly helps us get the word out to more listeners.
Lindsay Gordon 24:32
And as Marcus mentioned before, this episode transcript will be available on the podcast page. So if there's any information or links you'd like to go back and read, find us at ohiohealth.com/the wellness conversation as always. Thanks for joining us.