This story was originally reported by WHRO News.
The Nansemond Indian Nation will open its second medical clinic in Newport News on March 1.
It’s the latest in a fast-moving plan to expand the tribe’s medical footprint to vulnerable communities across the region, and there are more clinic locations on the horizon.
The tribe started building Fishing Point Healthcare in 2023, which was made possible by the Nansemond Nation’s federal recognition five years earlier.
That recognition allows the tribe to look after the health of its own members and serve those receiving federal healthcare assistance — like Medicaid.
Lance Johnson — Fishing Point’s CEO and a member of a tribe in the Western United States — has a decade of experience running tribal healthcare operations.
Johnson said Native Americans across the nation suffer from higher rates of poverty and worse health outcomes than average, a pattern not too different from many pockets of Hampton Roads.
A lack of accessible healthcare in the largely Black community of Southeast Newport News has left residents there with life expectanciesa decade shorter than the state average. More than one-quarter of people in the arealive below the poverty line, and the community is a stone’s throw from a coal terminal that often carpets the area in a fine layer of coal dust. Many say the dust causes chronic respiratory problems.
“That’s really what we're trying to provide, is a high quality of care to an underserved population including those who are non-native,” Johnson said.
Fishing Point opened its first clinic a year ago in Portsmouth. It also operates an in-home health service and runs a 20-bed alcohol and substance abuse facility, and a standalone behavioral health facility — both in Chesapeake.
The group has also taken over a community pharmacy in Newport News and will open a small primary care office near City Center at Oyster Point on March 1. That will serve as a temporary office in the city while Fishing Point builds out a 17,000 square-foot clinic at 25th Street and Jefferson Avenue.
That will open in phases starting this fall, just like the Portsmouth clinic. It’ll provide all the same services as that first clinic — a one-stop shop for doctor and dentist appointments with an in-house pharmacy, physical therapy and a radiology departments more expansive than the Portsmouth location.
Once the full clinic opens, Fishing Point plans to turn the Thimble Shoals office into a kind of specialty health care office, though the details are still worked out.
Money made by the business venture is meant to provide for the health of the tribe — which currently means reinvesting profits to grow Fishing Point to provide even more medical access.
The expansions will keep coming, Johnson said.
Fishing Point has already bought a building on Church Street in Norfolk and will be opening a small clinic there in June. That Norfolk location will eventually offer outpatient surgeries like knee scoping, likely sometime in 2026.
The tribe also has plans for clinics in Chesapeake, Virginia Beach, Williamsburg and Suffolk, where the Nansemond Nation is headquartered.
“Obviously, those plans are years and years away, but we do want to continue to expand and bring this quality health care to everybody who is needing it,” Johnson said.
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