For the past five years, Joe Jackson has been one of the Fox Valley’s most recognizable advocates for people in need – as the former executive director of Hesed House in Aurora and most recently as a vice president for the Association for Individual Development, a role he assumed in April.
What many people may not realize is advocacy has long been a shared calling in the Jackson household.
Wife Tricia Jackson has poured her heart into volunteering. That not only includes her work with several civic groups and her children’s schools in Oswego, but also at Hesed House, serving food and manning the clothes closet for the homeless shelter, and as guardian ad litem for CASA Kane County, partnering with the courts to ensure the best possible outcome for children whose families are going through rough transitions.
Her latest volunteer effort, however – running the Kendall County Free Clinic – could be life-saving.
Every Thursday afternoon, Jackson leaves her full-time job as a nurse practitioner at an Oswego medical office to work at this clinic that’s part of the Kendall County Food Pantry, which is currently undergoing significant improvements due to a HUD grant that includes new lighting, ceiling fans, restrooms, warehouse storage racking and warehouse floors.
Jackson replaced Dr. Maria Dana Sutkus, who retired after putting in many years with this clinic that provides care for residents with limited or no health insurance. Services include physical exams, blood pressure screenings, sick visits for common illnesses, evaluations and treatments of colds, flu, COVID-19, ear and sinus infections, sore throats, urinary tract infections and minor skin infections.
“Tricia has seamlessly stepped in to continue providing compassionate, high-quality care to our clients,” says food pantry Executive Director Alex Hurd.
Beyond her clinical expertise, he adds, Jackson has “an incredible bedside manner and a genuinely caring personality” that makes her “exceptionally well suited to welcome and care for those who visit our clinic.”
One of her first patients since taking over in May, Jackson recalls, was a man who had lost his job just six months before becoming eligible for Medicare and needed blood pressure medication to get him through until his birthday. Another patient required surgery to remove a benign growth. She made both possible through connections with other healthcare organizations that also offer lab work and X-rays, as well as limited specialty referrals.
“It really warms my heart to see us all working together,” Jackson says, noting how “critical” these partnerships are because healthcare in Kendall County is not as readily available as in Aurora, where organizations such as the VNA benefit from federal funding and a broader network of services.
The idea, she tells me, is to bridge the gaps in the healthcare system, which have grown wider with changes affecting Affordable Care Act coverage.
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It’s already “a confusing enrollment process,” which means some people don’t even realize they have lost coverage until they show up needing medical care, Jackson said, adding that “some are undocumented and reluctant to seek care at all.”
This free Kendall County healthcare resource does have its limitations. Physical therapy is not available, nor is every diagnostic test offered. But the clinic, which often gets donations from residents of unused medications or medical equipment, always offers hope.
And that’s a big word in the Jackson household – as is “service.”
Both she and her husband grew up under challenging circumstances, with Tricia Jackson describing the great aunt “who took me in” as a child as “the most amazing human I ever met.” So when she learned the clinic’s physician was retiring with no one to fill those shoes, “she could not stand by and let that happen,” says Joe Jackson.
It’s a determination and passion extending beyond her own community.
Tricia Jackson recently did an interview alongside Gov. JB Pritzker for an organization called Protect our Care on the year anniversary of the passage of President Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” – which could throw more than half a million Illinois residents off Medicaid because of new eligibility rules, work requirements and more frequent eligibility checks.
Critics of the bill say hospitals, especially those in rural areas and serving large Medicaid populations, are expected to see more uninsured patients and less reimbursements. And that worries Jackson, who watches “people of all ages” walk through the doors of the Oswego practice “scared” or “nervous” because “they don’t know what to do” after losing their healthcare or are in danger of losing it.
“We are taking a population already vulnerable and stressed,” she insists, and “setting them up in a system that is set to fail.”
Which is why Jackson admits “there are days” when “things can get overwhelming.”
If that happens, she quickly adds, she and Joe “have to remind each other it is time to take a step back.
“That it’s OK you have not done everything, but you have done enough.”