Dozens of area youngsters went back to school with a little style and a lot of substance this year courtesy of the Penn Medicine Princeton Health community.
Staff members, physicians and volunteers throughout Princeton Health donated 74 backpacks and enough school supplies to fill each backpack (and then some) during the annual Backpack Challenge coordinated by staff of the Bristol-Myers Squibb Community Health Center. The backpacks and school supplies were distributed to parents whose school-aged children are patients of the community health center, a clinic attached to Princeton Medical Center that provides primary and specialty care to uninsured and underinsured individuals of all ages in central New Jersey.
The clinic, which has been a part of the hospital for close to 90 years, provides more than 31,000 patient visits annually. Patient care is provided by Princeton Health physicians and medical residents supervised by physician faculty members of Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.
The community health center also collects department store and supermarket gift cards every fall to benefit patients’ families during the holiday season.