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Scranton artist Allison LaRussa will offer purposeful projects to promote healing and prevent physician burnout

Baring a bit of her left shoulder, Allison LaRussa reveals a tattooed typewriter that pays homage to one of her inspirations.

“That’s my Sylvia Plath arm,” she says, gently laughing. “Plath is one of my favorite writers. She struggled with mental illness and was very vocal about it, so I can relate a lot to her poetry.”

Beyond mere body art, this image and others inked onto Allison’s arms and neck reveal more about her mindset and life purpose than any LinkedIn profile.

The Scranton native is foremost a creative soul. She is an artist/singer who knows firsthand the healing capacity of personal expression, whether through paints, clay, clothes, music, the written word or other outlets. She also is someone who copes with mental health illnesses and dares to talk openly about them so that others can be helped. And now, as of mid-2021, Allison is The Wright Center for Community �ʼһ���’s recently hired Director of �ʼһ��� Humanities.

In the newly created role, Allison, 34, will promote wellness among The Wright Center’s employees, its patients and members of the broader community by engaging them in creative activities.

“No other health center that I know of has a position quite like this,” she says. “It’s such a progressive, amazing thing to have the creative arts in a �ʼһ��� facility.”

Dr. Linda Thomas-Hemak, President and CEO of The Wright Centers for Community �ʼһ��� and �ʼһ��� Medical Education, calls Allison “a valued member of our team.”

“She will nurture positivity and resiliency within individuals and at the organizational level, which is particularly relevant as we collectively emerge from the pandemic experience,” Dr. Thomas said. 

Allison’s art sessions will blend some Bob Ross-style instruction – for example, on painting murals or making a mixed-media collage – with a relaxed, therapy-like atmosphere. She expects to frequently engage with physicians and other healthcare providers, exercising their ability to balance the scientific regions of their brains with the parts that spark when deciding whether to dab a pencil-thin paintbrush in, say, ultramarine blue or magenta.

Among those expected to benefit: The Wright Center’s physician trainees.

A 2010 Marywood University graduate, Allison has long been active in the region’s arts scene.

She previously performed with Doghouse Charlie, a folk-indie-alternative band to which she contributed vocals. She’s been a fixture for many years with First Friday Scranton, watching it grow from a fringe activity to a popular monthly draw in the heart of the downtown. She’s even led art activities for children at Scranton’s McDade Park.

During one of her sessions at The Wright Center’s Scranton Practice, which was geared toward a more mature group of learners, Allison guided about 14 �ʼһ��� residents through a mask-painting exercise. The activity was intended to help them explore the concept of professional identity formation. Each participant received a paper mache-like mask and was asked to paint the outside depicting how they typically present themselves to the world. On the mask’s interior, they were encouraged to paint aspects of themselves that they are less prone to share with others but wish could be seen.

Allison’s purposeful projects in many ways complement The Wright Center’s emerging Lifestyle Medicine program. (So, too, do the classes she leads in the community as a certified Pilates instructor.)

A prevention-focused program, Lifestyle Medicine inspires people to take a proactive approach to their healthcare by controlling factors such as the foods they eat and how they manage stress. As she sees it, art can be a central part of this holistic way of achieving well-being and happiness.

“When we’re creating art, we are able to be mindful through the process,” Allison says. “Obviously when we’re more mindful, when we’re more present, we have less anxiety. In turn, we’re less susceptible to the negative mental and physical consequences of stress.”

Art activities will be offered at The Wright Center’s primary care practices in Northeastern Pennsylvania, as well as other sites, and reach all types of audiences: homeless individuals, school-age students, veterans, and seniors, some of whom might be socially isolated and susceptible to depression.

Allison has a particular calling to assist people grappling with drug-and-alcohol and mental health issues. In her life, she has been diagnosed with anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.

Trained as a Certified Peer Specialist nearly six years ago, she fully appreciates the power of sharing one’s personal story of recovery with people who are currently ensnared by substance abuse and/or mental health challenges. “Hearing other people’s stories has helped me,” she says. “If they hadn’t been so open and vulnerable, I don’t know where I’d be at this point.”

To pay it forward, Allison seems to keep both sides of her own “mask” on perpetual display, relating her past internal struggles via informal conversations and more planned forums, including an occasional podcast. As a teenager, she never imagined that she would one day inject illegal drugs or spend time in jail. But, during this survivor’s journey, she has dealt with trauma, a sports injury, a sometimes overpowering emotional pain, and an addiction that stemmed in large part from attempts to numb the hurt.

“I completely lost myself,” she once wrote. “I made many mistakes. … Lied endlessly to the ones I loved and hurt anyone in my path. My moral compass was completely nonexistent.”

Allison largely credits her family’s involvement for saving her; they dropped her at the doorstep of a treatment center where she got the right assistance at the right time. Art therapy became not only a source of personal consolation and inspiration but also a career path. In the years since, the Dunmore High School alumna worked at recovery centers in Carbondale and Waymart, offering clients the artistic tools and safe, supportive environments necessary to soothe, restore, and possibly even reshape themselves.

“A lot of healing happens through the arts,” she says. “Sometimes people don’t want to discuss what they’re feeling during traditional talk therapy. So, to have an opportunity to paint or write about it makes it easier for people to process what they’re going through.”

Consider, for example, the rush on art supplies during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of us apparently were compelled to visit the art store aisles because we had the urge to draw, paint, and otherwise release our own mixed-up feelings – and fears – in a way that didn’t require speaking.

“The creative arts allow each of us to dive into that expression,” she says, “and to explore who we are as a person.”

With Allison’s assistance, many of The Wright Center’s employees and patients will be given opportunities to make those self-discoveries, sharing bits of themselves in artwork that is inwardly significant and outwardly beautiful.

As our endorsed ‘Hometown Scholar,’ she’s now on path to becoming a physician

For Pittston resident Moriah Bartolai, the journey to �ʼһ��� school began with the jarring loss of a loved one.

Her cherished grandfather, who at age 93 still taught piano lessons to her and about a dozen others, tripped and fell one night in his kitchen. He broke a hip. Moriah was then a senior in high school, and she soon began serving as part-time caregiver, tending to her grandfather’s basic needs and accompanying him to doctor’s appointments.

“Taking care of my grandfather, that’s what planted the seed,” Moriah says. Her goal to become a physician further took shape in the five years since then and, in early May, she received a highly anticipated letter of acceptance.

Moriah has been selected to attend �ʼһ��� school at A.T. Still University School of Osteopathic Medicine in Arizona (ATSU-SOMA), where she will participate in its innovative .

The program, conducted with The Wright Center for Community �ʼһ��� and other partners, allows aspiring physicians to study at the central campus in Mesa, Arizona, for their first year of �ʼһ��� school, then complete the second through fourth years at one of a select number of health centers elsewhere in the United States. Moriah, 23, began her studies in Arizona this July.

She became only the second area resident – and second Wright Center-endorsed candidate – to enter the Hometown Scholars program.

Along with meeting the rigorous requirements to apply to �ʼһ��� school, a Hometown Scholar must spend time in a community health center and be recommended by a community health center leader. In Moriah’s case, her endorsement came from Dr. Linda Thomas-Hemak, CEO of The Wright Center for Community �ʼһ���.

“Moriah is dedicated to becoming a highly skilled, compassionate primary care osteopathic physician and healthcare leader who will both serve and advocate for vulnerable populations, communities and humanity,” said Dr. Thomas-Hemak.

Created as a way to guide talented youth toward a rewarding and respected career, The Hometown Scholars program identifies and recruits future �ʼһ��� professionals who, in turn, serve as aspirational examples for other young people in our region.

Moriah previously worked at The Wright Center’s Mid Valley and Scranton primary care practices, serving as a �ʼһ��� scribe. She is an alumna of Scranton Preparatory School, graduating in 2016, and the University of Pittsburgh, where she earned degrees in anthropology and microbiology.

Drawn to the sciences as a youngster, Moriah initially thought she would one day become a �ʼһ��� researcher. As a first-year college student, however, she worked in a wet lab, delving into the mysteries of a rare cause of blindness. She appreciated the experience but realized “it wasn’t what I dreamed of doing when I got older.”

Instead, she was seeking a role that provided more robust human interaction. She found it as a college junior during a job at the UPMC Cardiovascular Institute. Moriah worked among physicians, nurses and other professionals in its Heart SCORE Clinical Research Lab, which is conducting a years-long project to better assess the risk of developing cardiovascular disease, especially among women and racial minorities.

Moriah met with the project’s participants, collecting their lipid panels and guiding them through questionnaires. “I loved being able to see patients,” says Moriah.  “I loved being able to teach, telling them about new things the lab was going to be doing and why it was doing them.”

Around that time, Moriah decided to aim to become a doctor; she buckled down on her studies and began preparing to take the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT).

Her career aspiration was fueled in no small part by earlier observations of how the healthcare system had treated her grandfather, Gino Bartolai Sr., during his final months. She witnessed his rapid decline from confident, independent family patriarch to shy patient, so meek that he sometimes wouldn’t even tell doctors or nurses about the pain he was experiencing.

“He might not have been the most educated man in the traditional sense, but he was a very smart guy. He ran his own business, and it was a successful one. He lived a really long, wise life. Yet he was ashamed to speak up for himself in those �ʼһ��� settings,” she says. “As a future physician I want to make sure patients don’t feel that way. I wish he could’ve been more empowered to understand what his diagnosis was and to understand his choices.”

By virtue of enrolling at ATSU-SOMA, Moriah will be immersed in a program that aims to produce highly competent and compassionate physicians. And she will engage with patients in clinical settings sooner than many of her counterparts at other �ʼһ��� schools.

Most schools typically don’t offer clinical rotations until the third year. However, ATSU-SOMA uses what is known as the “1+3 model.” That means Moriah will spend her first year on the Mesa campus doing didactic coursework and gaining skills through simulations and other activities. Then she will have the opportunity to return to Scranton for her second through fourth years, learning in the classroom while also going with physicians into The Wright Center’s clinical settings at least once a week.

An emphasis is placed on patient interaction, professionalism, ethics, preventive medicine and communication skills.

“It does give you a leg up,” says Moriah. “I’m going to get a lot more patient experience than I would at any other �ʼһ��� school. And it’s ungraded patient experience, so there’s no kind of pressure to perform. You can learn from it, without feeling like it’s going to be affecting your chance later on to get a residency.”

Moriah has been in touch with The Wright Center’s first Hometown Scholar, Grace McGrath, a Dunmore resident who entered the program in 2019. “She’s been a great resource,” Moriah says.

Each woman is now part of a unique program. ATSU-SOMA – which bills itself as “The Medical School of the Future” – helps to create a pipeline of exceptional �ʼһ��� and dental students who are committed to serving in the nation’s community health centers. These centers provide affordable care to traditionally underserved populations, including low-income individuals and people who face other barriers to healthcare.

For Moriah, studying in Arizona represents the chance to not only pursue her fulfillment of a career goal but also a more carefree one. In 2020, she and some friends had intended to celebrate their college graduations with a trip to the Southwest, sightseeing at places such as Antelope Canyon and the better-known Grand Canyon. But then the coronavirus pandemic hit and scuttled their travel plans.

Now she is attending a respected �ʼһ��� school in the wide-open West, a place where it can seem the sky’s the limit. 

“While growing up, a �ʼһ��� career was definitely out of my realm of experience; I didn’t know any doctors, aside from my pediatrician,” she says. “But I was raised in the kind of environment where I never doubted that I could be whatever I wanted to be.”

The Hometown Scholars program offers educational opportunities for aspiring physicians, physician assistants and dentists. To learn more, please email howellse@thewrightcenter.org or call 570-591-5132.

The Wright Center offers mental and behavioral health services to patients of all ages at our Mid Valley, Scranton and Clarks Summit practices. At this time, due to a high demand for mental health services, the wait time for psychiatric and therapeutic appointments is approximately 6 to 8 weeks, as it is with most local and national behavioral health providers. 

For mental health emergencies, our care teams can help connect you with crisis-based services through our partnerships with local emergency departments and Scranton Counseling Center and Children’s Service Center. For all other previously scheduled behavioral health appointments, please rest assured that your appointment is on track and we’ll see you as scheduled. 

COVID-19 has increased the need for mental and behavioral health services, stressing a system that already suffers from a shortage of providers not just in Northeast Pennsylvania, but nationwide. According to the CDC, mental health-related visits have increased for both children and adults throughout the pandemic. At The Wright Center, we’re averaging 200 new referrals for behavioral health services per month. 

In addition to in-person appointments, we also offer telehealth and virtual visits. For more information, please visit Behavioral �ʼһ��� – The Wright Center.

“Four years ago, we became part of the national solution to the well-documented problem of limited access to behavioral health care with the launch of this community-based program accredited by the Accreditation Council for �ʼһ��� Medical Education,” said Dr. Chandragiri, who also serves as an associate professor of psychiatry at the GCSOM. “We are incredibly proud and excited to celebrate this milestone with our first group of graduates, who are paving the way for generations of new psychiatrists to train in Scranton and then go on to serve both locally and nationally.”

The 2021 Wright Center psychiatry graduates include:

• Alex Slaby, M.D. 
• Rooshi Patel, M.D.
• Hema Venigalla, M.D.
• Qais Zalim, M.D.

Notably, Dr. Slaby is a graduate of Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine, and will practice in Eastern Pennsylvania at St. Luke’s University in Bethlehem.

Supported by the U.S. Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services through Geisinger Community Medical Center and the U.S. �ʼһ��� Resources and Services Administration’s Teaching �ʼһ��� Center �ʼһ��� Medical Education Program, The Wright Center’s psychiatry program was established in direct response to the critical shortage of psychiatrists in Northeast Pennsylvania and across the United States. 

The psychiatry residents receive their unique training in The Wright Center for Community �ʼһ���’s integrated primary care-behavioral health “�ʼһ��� home” teaching health centers, which strive to provide whole-person care, including �ʼһ���, dental, addiction and recovery and behavioral health services all under the same roof.

“After four successful years of learning in our diverse clinical environments, our residents are about to graduate as exceptionally well-trained psychiatrists,” said Meaghan Ruddy, Ph.D., The Wright Center’s Senior Vice President of Academic Affairs. “These pioneering physicians will provide immediate benefits by using their skills to improve the lives of those in desperate need of help. We’re incredibly proud of them for living The Wright Center’s mission of improving the health and welfare of the communities they have and will serve through inclusive and responsive health services.” 

Based in Scranton, The Wright Center is our nation’s largest Teaching �ʼһ��� Center �ʼһ��� Medical Education Consortium. The four graduating psychiatry residents join 77 other Wright Center 2021 graduates who are completing their training in internal medicine, family medicine and cardiology, as well as The Wright Center’s first graduating classes in gastroenterology and geriatrics. Commencement will stream online at TheWrightGraduation.org starting at 6 p.m. on June 18.

The Wright Center offers oral and dental health services to people of all ages at our South Scranton and Mid Valley (Jermyn) practices. At this time, due to high volumes, the wait for routine dental treatment is approximately 6 to 8 weeks, as it is at most local dentist offices. 

For true dental emergencies, our care teams can help, and we will get patients in as quickly as possible as needs arise. For all other previously scheduled dental appointments, please be assured that your appointment is on track, and we will see you as scheduled.  

As many COVID restrictions are lifted and Northeast Pennsylvania makes progress toward herd immunity with widespread vaccination efforts, there has been greater demand for dental appointments as families emerge from the pandemic. In fact, we’ve seen a 30% increase in dental patients since January alone.

To make an appointment with our dental team, please call 570-230-0019.

Scranton, Pa. (June 3, 2021) – Today, The Wright Center for Community �ʼһ���, an organization dedicated towards safety-net, comprehensive primary health care services, has announced that the organization is in the final phase of mailing out refund checks to patients who may have been billed or made co-payments for primary care services provided in conjunction with the administration of the COVID-19 vaccination between Dec. 20, 2020, and April 14, 2021. 

Along with the refund checks, an accompanying correspondence states: “Please accept the enclosed refund check reflecting that The Wright Center for Community �ʼһ��� has decided to absorb the costs of care you received during your COVID-19 vaccination experience.  Our leadership team and entire organization are privileged to have served you and are relieved that you have been vaccinated.” 

The message continues: “Please know we are working collaboratively with insurance carriers to reflect appropriate adjustments, which will not affect you or result in any cost to you. The standard COVID-19 vaccination administration charge has been submitted to and will be paid by insurance carriers or government payers, as applicable. Again, there will be no cost to you. We apologize for the discrepancy caused by uncertain guidance and any resulting inconvenience.” 

According to Jennifer Walsh, The Wright Center’s Senior Vice President of Enterprise Integrity, “We are deeply committed to the health and wellness of our community and we remain proud participants of the nation’s ongoing COVID-19 vaccination efforts. We encourage everyone who has not yet been vaccinated to do so in order to protect themselves, their families and everyone they come in contact with. The more people who get vaccinated, the better we can protect our community.”

The Wright Center for Community �ʼһ��� offers those seeking vaccinations the ability to choose between a COVID-19 vaccination-only appointment or a COVID-19 vaccination appointment within the context of an office visit.  To schedule a COVID-19 vaccination appointment or for more information, please visit COVID-19 – The Wright Center To learn more about the COVID-19 vaccine and why it’s important to get vaccinated, please visit the CDC’s website