Making Health Care Accessible鈥擝y Air
Eileen Ambrosini moved to the small town of Atwater, California, in 1979. Over the next three decades she met her husband, raised her daughter, and worked as a high school French teacher, all in the heart of the state鈥檚 agricultural corridor.
But when Ambrosini was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005, the town鈥檚 rural location and lack of specialized medical services left her no option but to drive upwards of six hours every Friday to receive treatment and counseling at Stanford Hospital in Palo Alto.
鈥淚 was so exhausted after a while that I literally could not get out of bed on Saturday,鈥 Ambrosini says. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 know how long I could have continued to do that. It was just taking too much from the energy that I didn鈥檛 have.鈥
One day, Ambrosini overheard a fellow patient at the hospital talking about how they got to treatment every week鈥攁 nonprofit organization of volunteer pilots called .
鈥淭he fundamental value that Angel Flight [West] offers is the ability to connect people in remote areas with advanced medical treatment,鈥 says Chris Bennett, a volunteer pilot with the organization. For the past four years, Bennett has regularly flown Ambrosini to and from treatment.
Bennett got his pilot鈥檚 certificate shortly after retiring from a career in tech and immediately decided to start volunteering to infuse his personal love of flying with the purpose of helping others.
鈥淚t鈥檚 a very centering, grounding experience that allows me to combine a bunch of things that I enjoy all mixed together,鈥 he says.
The estimates that transportation challenges prevent 3.6 million Americans from receiving medical care each year. Of those cases, the estimates that 25,000 public benefit flights, such as those operated by Angel Flight West, take place every year in the United States.
鈥淚t鈥檚 the best of all possible worlds,鈥 says Ambrosini, 鈥渂ecause I live in a very peaceful area, but then I know every Friday [鈥 or whenever it is I need to get back to Palo Alto, it鈥檚 the 10 minutes to the Air Force base, and that鈥檚 [all of] my driving.鈥
This story and video were originally produced for and published by . They appear here with permission.
Martin do Nascimento
is a documentary photographer and filmmaker based in Oakland, California. He is a trilingual returned Peace Corps Volunteer and journalism has taken him around the world. His work has been published by The New York Times, The Washington Post, ProPublica, Frontline, AJ+, Cosmopolitan, News Photographer magazine, National Public Radio, Seeker, NBC News, Telemundo, Univisi贸n, The Dallas Morning News, The Texas Tribune and elsewhere.
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