On the Job

Kids who go to the Ronald McDonald Care Mobile see the familiar grinning-clown logo on the outside and another welcoming smile inside: that of Jules Mijares, program director of this mobile healthcare facility. Gulfshore Business caught up with Mijares to learn how she "clowns around" to help Collier County’s underserved youth.

What is the Care Mobile, and what does it do?
It’s a medical/dental unit in a 40-foot truck. It looks just like a dentist’s office or a pediatrician’s office inside. We go to the Title I schools where more than 75 percent of the students receive free or reduced [-price] lunch and offer health screenings for fifth graders and the Head Start kids [from low-income families]. A health screening entails vision, hearing, dental, growth and development.

We’ve screened over 7,000 kids. We also offer free, new-student physicals for any new child who has arrived in Collier County from another state or another country.

What does your job entail?
I oversee the day-to-day activities and set everything up, like when we’re going to do the screenings, what’s needed and the information that goes back. I’m on board whenever we do any of the physicals, and I also do some nursing and medical assisting.

How do you help kids overcome any fear they may have of seeing a doctor?
I think that kids, once they get on board, realize that it’s a fun place and that they’re safe. We make it very kid-friendly. At one school we go to, we’ve been told to please not come into the cafeteria when pre-K is having their lunch because they get so excited to see us.

How do the families you work with respond to what you do?
A retired orthodontist who spends his winters here contacted us saying that he wanted to help by doing free orthodontic work for kids who need it. One mother cried hysterically [when she found out]. She said, "You don’t understand; this is going to change my daughter’s life. She doesn’t want to smile. Thanks to you guys, this is going to be possible."