BRAZOS COUNTY, Texas — It has officially been a year since The United Way Brazos Valley launched their Ride2Health program and now, they are calling on the community to help.
“Ride2Health is kind of like a medical Uber or a Lyft. We use volunteer drivers to drive patients to their health care appointments and we have a partnership with five healthcare organizations in the Brazos County," explained United Way Brazos Valley President and CEO, Peggi Goss. "It was a conversation with our partner agencies about how there’s a lack of ability for people to quickly get to their healthcare appointments, so we’ve been working on it a long time and this is the best model we can come up with and its been working really well so far.”
The program’s website also makes it easy for volunteer drivers to connect with their passengers.
“The website actually is really intuitive. It sends the drivers an email so when they put their availability they get auto-connected to a ride or they grab a ride or they say they can take a ride and they’ll get an email and text with the information so they know where to pick the client up,” said Goss.
The relatively new program has been an essential resource to many and now they're in need of more volunteers to help continue supporting the community.
“We’ve given almost 200 rides now since the program was launched so what we need most for the program now is volunteers," explained Program Specialist, Emma Wright. "It's very easy to be a volunteer with Ride2Health and some people might say well I only have an hour free a week and that’s fine. In an hour you can take one or two rides and if you can only take one or two rides a week that’s fine. So that’s really what we’re looking for right now, just people who might have just some free time throughout the week."
Click here to volunteer for the program.