KC community rallies with volunteer caregivers to seek improvements in health care system

Volunteer caregivers receive greetings and thanks from a receiving line of community leaders at the start of a community workshop on improving healthcare policies Nov. 2 at the Gregg/Klice Community Center.

Before they got down to the work of improving our healthcare system, volunteer caregivers at Kansas City’s Gregg/Klice Community Center got some royal treatment Nov. 2.

Nearly 50 community leaders, summoned by Jim and Janice Nunnelly, welcomed the caregivers with a receiving line.

"This is to say your community supports you," said to the caregivers amid a crowd of some 120 people for the Saturday morning event. “Without these people," he said, "our health care system would collapse."

Jim Nunnelly, a long-time community activist and one of the early architects in shaping LINC’s Caring Communities, and his wife, Janice, gathered the community to give these “unsung heroes” praise, Nunnelly said, and to get their help in drafting a “tailor-made resource guide.”

The revised guide will be produced with the help of the students at Arts Tech in downtown Kansas City, Nunnelly said, and posted on Facebook.

The Nunnellys’ admiration for caregivers has grown weekly as they have hosted their weekly radio forum — Plain Talk about Diabetes — on 1590am every Monday at 1 p.m.

“It has connected us with so much knowledge of the health care system,” he said.

The Nunnellys’ radio show inspired their desire to honor volunteer caregivers.