

Working with vulnerable populations is something Shondra Williams has done since the beginning of her career in nursing. And now almost 30 years into her career, she’s not only gotten her doctorate in the field, but now leads one of New Orleans’s most comprehensive clinics that continues the work she started in.
Since 2012, Williams has been the president and CEO of InclusivCare, a system of health care clinics spread across the Greater New Orleans area that provides low-cost care to medically underserved residents. InclusivCare will host a gala on Dec. 6 at 7 p.m. in the Royal Palm, celebrating its 20th anniversary serving the community.
For Williams, her career began working with those underserved populations at Charity Hospital — where she was actually born. There, she worked in various specialties, from pediatrics to women’s health.

“I feel like my career has come full circle,” she said. “I have the ability to impact the lives of individuals who, if it were not for InclusivCare, they are likely to not have access to health care.”
Williams said that the state currently services around 400,000 individuals who receive their health care from a local community health center. At InclusivCare, people on Medicaid health plans represent a majority of their patient base, she added.
“We are charged with the responsibility of ensuring that their health care is high quality, safe and affordable,” she said.
InclusivCare, she added, helps patients afford care through federal mechanisms such as the Sliding Fee Discount Program, which allows them to pay for their care based on their economic and other statuses. But it’s also challenging because in high need communities, “you are having to utilize small amounts of funding to go a longer way,” Williams said.

But InclusivCare overcomes those challenges because “we’re committed to the cause.”
“Through that commitment, we’ve developed a business model with our board of directors, who are also patients of the center,” she said. “We’re able to identify the services that our community requires or needs, and then we seek to bring those services to those individuals.”
For Williams, there are a lot of accomplishments she is proud of in the past two decades. InclusivCare assisted with medical services during Hurricane Katrina. It expanded a clinic out in the Jean Lafitte community that was impacted by the BP oil spill and helped with those efforts.
Those have been crises that the clinic has been able to “stand tall in time of need for our community,” she said.
Now, InclusivCare has four clinics spread across the greater New Orleans area in Marrero, Avondale, Kenner and Lafitte. And its upcoming gala to commemorate the past 20 years will celebrate all these accomplishments with its community partners.
“If it were not for the partners in this work, we could have never accomplished it all,” Williams said.
But at the end of the day, Williams anticipates the next 20 years will bring even more growth, especially when it comes to expanding health care services to even more areas of New Orleans.
And there are three “L’s” that she will continue to hold dear to herself in order to lead the way: to leave a legacy, to love the people and to laugh.
“What is life without laughing?” she said. “We don’t take ourselves too seriously, and we just love what we do.”
To learn more about our 20th anniversary Gala, visit our website.
Learn more details regarding low healthcare for all here.