Less than five years after six-time NBA champion Michael Jordan opened a medical clinic in Charlotte, North Carolina to serve low-income communities, he has opened his third such facility in Wilmington, North Carolina

Novant Health and Michael Jordan cooperated reopen the third medical clinic in Jordan family town Wilmington. After opening two clinics in Charlotte inside a 12 months of one another (2109 and 2020) and a $7 million donation to every site, the most recent clinic is being funded by a $10 million donation from the previous Chicago Bulls legend.

The doors are open to the brand new Novant Health Michael Jordan Family Medical Clinic in Wilmington! Thank you, Michael Jordan, for being a a part of our commitment to providing comprehensive health services to our community. Find out more about our partnership: https://t.co/p6vhibrs4n pic.twitter.com/4Ak8qeMgZG

— Novant Health (@NovantHealth) May 7, 2024

“Everyone deserves access to quality health care, regardless of where you live or whether you have insurance,” Michael Jordan said in a written statement. “I am truly inspired by the many moving stories of people who are now thriving with the support of our company Charlotte medical clinics. I am confident that the new Novant Health clinic will have a positive impact on individuals and families throughout Wilmington. I am extremely grateful that I could help organize this day in my hometown.”

Novant Health i Jordan opened two Michael Jordan family clinics in Charlotte to maintain people in need who didn’t have access to medical care. Before the clinics debuted, many Charlotte residents didn’t have a primary care physician. The facilities offer whatcomprehensive primary care, behavioral health care and other support services.

The Wilmington facility is a 7,800-square-foot clinic with 12 patient rooms that accepts patients from 8:00 a.m. to five:00 p.m. Monday to Friday. Novant Health’s latest Community Care Cruiser vehicle will provide services to individuals throughout the region.

A second clinic is being built for them Wilmington the second Michael Jordan Family Medical Clinic, which can be positioned in a different location than the one which has just been launched.

“We know that people face significant barriers to health care, and Novant Health is minimizing these barriers so we can offer essential health care services to those who need them most,” he said Ernie Bovio, president of Novant Health’s coastal region and Novant Health New Hanover Regional Medical Center. “Each Novant Health Michael Jordan family practice has been carefully planned to be in the best location in the community. With our care team’s commitment to lifelong well-being, our third Michael Jordan Clinic is already realizing our vision to close health equity gaps by transforming health care, one patient at a time.”

NBA legend Charles Barkley recently joined host Shannon Sharpe on his “Club Shay Shay” podcast, where he talks about his upbringing in rural Alabama, his family dynamics, his temperament and his illustrious profession.

The former Philadelphia 76ers forward told a common story about his absent father, whom he saw only a few times as a child, flying across the country to reprimand him for not speaking Spanish.

During a conversation with Shannon Sharpe, Charles Barkley recalled two of the best moments from his youth, each of which involved leading his highschool basketball team to a championship.

Particularly during his senior yr of highschool, Barkley took his team to the state championship before he was injured. He then fell into depression, which affected his academic performance.

“Shannon, when I was in high school, a really traumatic event happened in my life,” he said, before explaining what he was pondering about as a teenager.

“I’m behind in all my classes. I caught up on every one of them except Spanish,” Barkley said. “I didn’t graduate, I had to go to summer school.”

Unaware of his son’s depression, Charles’ father, Frank Barkley, booked a flight from his home in California to Alabama.

“My dad, who lived in California my entire childhood, came over and gave me a new hole,” Barkley recalled. “And I’m already traumatized that I won’t make it to the march (for graduation), and when he arrived at that moment, I just (said) I’m not going to ever forgive that guy again for screaming at me like that because I used to be already down .

Shannon asked the current sports analyst how lively his father was in his life, and he replied that he could count on his hands how repeatedly he had seen his father face to face.

Barkley said, “Zero… I don’t think I saw him probably 10 times as a kid.”

According to Barkley, his father flew out to his own highschool reunion when the future NBA MVP’s evaluations got here in and determined he couldn’t graduate. That was the moment his father made the decision to grow to be a parent.

Barkley said that after seeing all his classmates graduate, he cried for two hours but decided he would never be in that place again.

“I stood nearby in the stadium, watched the graduation ceremony and cried for about two hours. And that night I said, ‘This is the last time I’m going to let anyone take control of my life,'” Barkley told Sharpe.

After talking about how hard-working his family’s matriarchs were and how they coped without their father around, he explained that he had finally had to come to terms with his absence.

“My dad wasn’t in the picture,” the 11-time All-Star explained at the starting of the two-hour conversation. “Me and my dad got along later in life, but at first I only had hostility and hatred towards him because he wasn’t around and didn’t do anything for us.”

Barkley said it was painful for him growing up as he watched his mother, a domestic employee and his grandmother, who worked in a chicken factory, trying to raise him and his three brothers. Despite financial difficulties and his father’s absence, Barkley noted that the family all the time seemed to have what they needed.

Shannon offered, “The forgiveness you gave him was for you. Because he lived his life, you were carrying around something that was weighing you down.

The host of “King Charles” agreed.

Barkley said one in every of the reasons he was so offended and furious on the court early in his skilled profession was because he was beating up his father and the teacher who failed him in Spanish, Ms. Gomez.

There was a final turning point in Barkley’s life. He said that when he met two-time NBA MVP Moses Malone, the 76ers center stepped in and became a father figure to young Barkley on their team, filling in where he really needed it.

Andscape has learned that Minnesota Timberwolves center/forward Karl-Anthony Towns has won the 2023-2024 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Social Justice Champion Award.

The NBA selection committee chosen Towns “due to his commitment to social justice and support of Abdul-Jabbar and the league’s decades-old values ​​of equality, respect and inclusion,” an NBA source said. Other finalists included Miami Heat center Bam Adebayo, New Orleans Pelicans guard CJ McCollum, Oklahoma City Thunder guard Lindy Waters III and LA Clippers guard Russell Westbrook.

Helping Towns’ candidacy was because he was a supporter of voting rights. The four-time NBA All-Star played a key role in passing Minnesota’s Voting Restoration Act (HF28), bipartisan laws that restored the voting rights of over 55,000 formerly incarcerated people in March 2023. Towns is an executive producer and investor in the documentary, a brief film that explores how digital transformation has enabled change in the complex legal justice system. He also provided funding for Ava DuVernay’s film and is a board member of the National Basketball Coalition for Social Justice.

Towns is predicted to receive the award before Game 3 of the Western Conference semifinals against the Denver Nuggets on Friday in Minneapolis.