Expecting parents in Tarrant County can now receive low-cost or free care out of a clinic on wheels in south Fort Worth.
The Center for Transforming Lives began working with Abide Women’s Health Services in August, providing prenatal and postpartum care to anyone who walks through the doors.
Abide provides services, including medical screenings and preventative care, every Monday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., using both their own mobile clinic and the Center for Transforming Lives’s mobile health rooms.
Carol Klocek, the CEO of the Center for Transforming Lives, said the partnership is meant to provide services without barriers.
“Women who haven’t sought prenatal care, it can be for a variety of reasons. It can be cost, it can be judgment, it can be that they’re feeling like the provider that they’re going to see is not going to understand them or understand their culture,” Klocek said. “Abide is really sensitive to all of those things and just meets the woman where she is to get her into care.”
Abide is one of three new partners that started using the mobile rooms, with Texas Health Resources and UNT Health Fort Worth also using the rooms on other days.
Center for Transforming Lives is the first facility that Abide is using for their mobile health clinic. The Dallas-based health nonprofit was given the bus in 2023 and looked for the best place to dispatch the unit.
Since December, Abide held town halls and met with maternal health groups in Tarrant County to find the best first location for the clinic.
“We really focused on what the community was saying that they needed,” said Jessica Dupree, vice president of clinical operations at Abide. “We never want to be community-placed, we want to be community-based.”
The nonprofit decided to partner with the Center for Transforming Lives because of its location in the community and the facility’s child care services.
“They were ready to host mobile health care, and it really turned out to be a blessing, because our numbers are increasing,” Dupree said. “It gives us more room and flexibility to be able to have more clients.”
Abide started in south Dallas back in 2017, looking to provide health services in a perinatal desert, where people have less access to maternal health resources. The nonprofit also looks to tackle the growing concern of maternal health for Black women, who are three times more likely to die because of a pregnancy, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Abide’s services are unique. While checkups with regular providers are often short appointments, Abide’s midwives are closer with patients, said Krystle Thomas, director of client resources and education at the nonprofit.
“Our midwives spend time with the clients, making sure that they have everything they need for them and their baby and their pregnancy to thrive,” Thomas said.
Since opening its brick-and-mortar clinic in 2020, Abide has seen tremendous growth. The nonprofit has seen a 30% to 40% increase year-over-year, Dupree said.
Part of that growth came from service demand across North Texas. In 2024, 9% of their clients came from Tarrant County, and Abide had clients from 10 other counties, Dupree said.
Abide charges $35 per appointment, but is willing to work with patients to provide services at a cost they can afford.
At the end of September, Abide’s schedule was completely booked in Fort Worth. Dupree said the nonprofit is currently looking to expand services to continue servicing Tarrant County residents.
Ismael M. Belkoura is the health reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at ismael.belkoura@fortworthreport.org.
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