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Faith-based organization provides mobile ultrasounds for rural pregnancies

Elevated Women's Healthcare is apart of Abba's House, a faith-based pregnancy crisis center in Riverton.
Taylar Stagner
/
Wyoming Public Media
Elevated Women's Healthcare is apart of Abba's House, a faith-based pregnancy crisis center in Riverton.

Elevation Healthcare is located in Riverton and has been sending out a mobile care unit to serve pregnancies in small Wyoming communities like Arapaho, Thermopolis, and Shoshoni.

Elevation Healthcare is a rebranding of Abba’s House, a faith-based pregnancy crisis center. Abba’s House has been located in Riverton for around 30 years.

Those who need prenatal care in small communities often have to travel hours to the nearest clinic. This causes pregnant people in rural communities to forgo trips to the doctors office.

Courtney Patterson, an Elevation Healthcare nurse, said they provide ultrasounds for free.

“Insurance companies are beginning to limit the number of ultrasounds that the women can have,like they can do the anatomy scan that's usually done around 20 weeks. And they don't want to do the early ultrasound for dating,” she said.

The traveling clinic provides pregnancy tests, and STI screenings, and ultrasounds. Without insurance, an ultrasound can cost a grand.

Patterson said the plan is, weather permitting to continue traveling from community to community until November. Then services will stop until Spring due to hazardous winter roads and weather.

Elevation Healthcare is in smaller communities on Fridays, this week they will be in Arapaho and Lander. Then Dubois, Worland, Shoshoni, and Thermopolis in rotation.

Elevation health does not perform, recommend or refer anyone for an abortion.

Taylar Dawn Stagner is a central Wyoming rural and tribal reporter for Wyoming Public Radio. She has degrees in American Studies, a discipline that interrogates the history and culture of America. She was a Native American Journalist Association Fellow in 2019, and won an Edward R. Murrow Award for her Modern West podcast episode about drag queens in rural spaces in 2021. Stagner is Arapaho and Shoshone.

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