Support Health Care in Barnardsville, NC - The "ACC"

Appalachia Community Clinic (The ACC) is established by a group of local students from Jung Tao School of Chinese Medicine who have come together in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. Our aim is to bring holistic health care to Barnardsville and to provide care for disaster relief, recovery, and beyond.

We are responding to a need that was not created by the hurricane, but which the disastrous effects of the hurricane revealed more starkly than ever. Barnardsville needs access to health care. Barnardsville needs community spaces. Barnardsville needs to grieve, mourn, heal, recover, and rebuild. We can help facilitate that process.

We officially opened our doors (as in tent flap) last week, Monday, October 21st. We put up some signs, lit our propane heaters, and set up a couple walled-in tents behind the mutual aid distribution hub at the Old Firestation across from the post office. In our first week we opened Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 11am-2pm. We offered free, community-style acupuncture treatments to the public on a walk-in basis. We offered an ear-acupuncture protocol called NADA that aims to relieve stress and trauma, and promote hope, calm, determination, and healing. We relied on donated supplies and volunteers.

Our question at the beginning of the week was, “Is there a need for this kind of service in our community?”

We treated 65 community members in our first 9 hours of clinic.

The answer was a resounding “Yes.”

Why do we need your donation?

Appalachia Community Clinic is currently operating out of a carport tent sustained by donations and volunteers but we have visions of continuing and expanding. We would like to move to an indoor space for the winter. We would like to expand our scope to be able to offer individualized treatments for acute and chronic conditions. We would like to offer modest compensation to practitioners and volunteers. We would like to purchase more comfortable chairs for the treatments. We would like to keep the clinic stocked with materials beyond the donations we've received. We would like to continue to offer free or donation-based treatments. We would like to introduce acupuncture as a non-invasive, non-pharmaceutical, holistic health care modality to people who may not typically have access to this type of health care. We would like to provide these resources to a historically under-resourced demographic. We would like to stick around for a while.

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About Hurricane Helene in Barnardsville, NC: How we arrived to Appalachia Community Clinic

Barnardsville is a small Appalachian mountain town 30 minutes north of Asheville. There is a gas station and a post office. The only restaurant was destroyed by the flood. We are located on Ivy Creek and various other creeks that feed Ivy Creek. Because of this, when the waters rose, most of Barnardsville flooded. Almost every major bridge in town gave way, along with many small ones. We lost all contact with the outside world for about 48 hours. No emergency services, no contact with county services, no food, no electricity, no water, no gas. Since we lost most bridges in the area, we were cut off and isolated from major highways for several days.

As the waters receded, we came together as a community and developed a mutual aid disaster relief hub to service the community. For several days, the first aid volunteers from the community were the only ones tending to the needs of an entire town of people with no access to health care which includes no electricity to power medical devices, no oxygen tanks for oxygen machines, and no pharmacies to refill essential medications. The community kitchen at the hub was the only place where many people had access to a hot meal. The spring water sourced and distributed by several community members was the only place folks could find clean drinking water.

After 5 days, some outside help started flowing into the community. Around day 6, we formed a team of acupuncturists, massage therapists, and counselors to start to address some underlying needs that were forming: trauma, secondary trauma, overwork, stress, anxiety, mania, grief, depression, restless sleep, musculoskeletal aches and pains from chainsawing and shoveling mud, hauling food and water. We realized that the need for this type of work will begin now, and will last long after the telephone poles have been repaired and the downed trees have been used for firewood.

Every single person in this community has been impacted by this natural disaster. Most of us remained without power for over 2 weeks and many still don’t have internet access. If your property didn’t get damaged, your neighbor's property surely did. Most of us have been working nonstop since the flood came. We have been using our bodies to muck out houses and clear trees. We have been using our minds tirelessly to plan how to recover lost income, lost employment, and afford the coming winter months. Nowhere we look has been overlooked by the storm, no aspect of our lives remains untouched. We have worn down our bodies in rebuilding and our psyches in observing utter devastation, debris and destruction all around.

GoFundMe told me to add this paragraph:

My name is Cora Turrell. I live in Barnardsville, NC. I am a student at Jung Tao School of Classical Chinese Medicine. I have been working with fellow students Dani Hill and Eleanor Turrell to form the ACC (Appalachia Community Clinic) along with many others.