The great work of United Neighborhood Health Services is profiled in today’s Tennessean as part of a continuing series on giving:

Freda Brooks spent the better part of this year living on the medical equivalent of the edge.

Brooks, 49, has high blood pressure and diabetes. For the first time in her 32-year work life, she is part of the working uninsured. Brooks thinks that’s what gave her the nerve to ask a coworker the kind of question that might seem impolite.

“I asked her, ‘How do you afford your insulin?’ ” Brooks said. “She told me, ‘Well, I go to the United Neighborhood Clinic.’ ”

United Neighborhood Health Services is a full-service community clinic system founded in 1976 that aims to ensure that everyone – regardless of income or insurance status – has access to the health care they need, said Dr. Keith Junior, chief medical officer. Today, the nonprofit agency operates more than a dozen clinics in mostly lower-income areas of Nashville and Hartsville and areas where other medical practitioners are scarce.