When Brittany Clark checked the weather forecast in late January and saw a winter storm barreling toward North Mississippi, she began preparing for the worst. Clark runs the Family Clinic of New Albany, a rural health-care facility serving many elderly and uninsured patients, and she feared the storm would be disastrous for those who were sick or otherwise vulnerable.
“I can’t tell you the uptick in visits for anxiety (we had) the week before,” recalled Clark, a nurse practitioner who grew up in Pontotoc, Mississippi, and now lives in neighboring Union County with her husband and two children. Several of her patients rely on home oxygen concentrators powered by electricity to breathe, she explained, and many live in remote areas that would be hard to reach in an emergency.
Clark spent the days before Winter Storm Fern handing out food, water, blankets, medication and other essentials at her clinic, hoping to help patients weather the extreme conditions and survive a few days indoors. In the aftermath of the severe weather, she and her team have provided critical services to residents across Union County, making care accessible to people who could not otherwise afford it.
As North Mississippi continues to recover from the worst winter storm to hit the region in three decades, Clark emphasized the need to learn from the response and incorporate those lessons into future disaster planning.
“We all need to have a lot of meetings after this,” she said, advocating for a collective debrief that brings all affected parties to the table. While she feels that local leaders and community members did the best they could under the circumstances, “there’s still room for improvement.”
Meeting the Moment
Clark never imagined that she’d wind up at a rural health clinic in New Albany—much less own one—when she began studying medicine in Mississippi. While completing her NP degree at the Mississippi University for Women, she signed up for monitored practice hours at the New Albany clinic, hoping to gain additional hands-on experience and earn some extra dollars before finishing school.
It was during those hours, working alongside the clinic staff and getting to know the patients they served, that she found her calling.
“Within that (first) month, I loved it,” Clark, who had a job lined up as an oncology NP at Baptist Memorial Hospital in Oxford, said. “I turned down the job with Baptist for a minimum-wage job here.”
Several years later, Clark and her husband purchased the New Albany clinic, aiming to continue its mission and fill a gap in care for rural, low-income Mississippians. Today, the facility serves about 9,000 patients annually, offering free education consults and wellness checks as well as primary and urgent-care services.
“Brittany has assembled a great crew, (and) she’s a really great leader for all the young folks she has working for her,” said Robert Vail, a nurse practitioner who previously owned the New Albany clinic with his wife, Gena. The couple now works part-time for Clark after selling her the business in 2017. “She definitely took the torch and ran with it.”
When Winter Storm Fern swept through Union County, it left thousands without power and damaged homes, vehicles and public infrastructure. Clark knew she had to open the clinic as soon as possible. With debris still covering roads and ice blanketing fields, driveways and sidewalks, she and her team of clinicians began seeing patients with no phone or internet services, using a single emergency cell phone to take outside calls and access online medical records.
It was “a lot,” Clark said of the storm’s immediate aftermath, recalling the many patients who visited the clinic with viral illnesses after spending days indoors with their families. She and most of her colleagues were still without power at home, she added, and some were commuting from relatives’ houses almost an hour away.
While Clark and her team tried contacting their most vulnerable patients following the storm, some did not resurface until several days later. She plans to keep a running list of patients using home oxygen moving forward, aiming to ensure that none slip through the cracks in future emergencies.
“This is just a special swath of land … that attracts natural disasters,” she said. “We try to learn from all of it and be more prepared the next time.”
Building Back Stronger
Clark believes that her responsibilities as a rural health provider go beyond treating patients’ physical ailments. In the weeks after Winter Storm Fern, she and her clinical team have connected Union County residents with various resources and support services, referring them to Samaritan’s Purse and other charitable groups assisting with disaster recovery.
“A lot of people were hit financially” by the storm and its fallout, Clark explained, highlighting the many county residents facing costly repairs and inflated utility bills after the severe weather. “We’ve been kind of a facilitator, getting them (connected) with organizations that are providing help.”
Through her volunteer work with the Unite Community Foundation, the county affiliate of a foundation based in Tupelo, Mississippi, Clark has helped raise more than $40,000 in disaster aid for Union County residents. She and her colleagues at the clinic have been helping patients apply for the funds, which were distributed as $150 checks over two and a half weeks.
“We were like, ‘How can we help the most people the fastest without making this too complicated?’” Clark said, noting that soliciting assistance through online portals or apps can be challenging for residents who are less technologically savvy. “We pointed many of our patients in that direction, and they were able to take that money and put it toward a bill or groceries.”
“(Brittany) is all about serving the people in whatever capacity they need,” Vail stressed. That desire extends to situations outside of natural disasters, he added.
Clark is adamant that more must be done to help Union County residents bounce back from Winter Storm Fern. Should the federal government approve direct financial assistance for Mississippians in the coming months, she plans to have insurance agents and other experts at her clinic to help people navigate the application process.
In the meantime, she urged her fellow residents to continue assisting friends and neighbors and maintain a united front in the face of tragedy.
“I think we definitely had tangible evidence of the culture of community in New Albany and Union County” during and after the storm, she concluded. “We were all without (something) at some point, and the only way we all got through it was by coming together and being there for each other.”
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