Ed Newman was attending a community meeting in Athens, Ohio, when he met Milena Miller, a home health aide who had spotted a trend among her clients. After returning home from a hospital stay, patients would use a piece of at-home medical equipment for only a few weeks or months. Others would then spend several thousand dollars on the same piece of equipment, only a brand-new one.
Miller started collecting equipment herself from clients who no longer needed it, and distributing it to those who did. Newman, who headed up the Zero Waste Program at the community development organization Rural Action, saw an initiative that could scale.
What’s more, such a donation program could fit nicely within his organization’s Zero Waste initiative, keeping nearly-new medical equipment out of landfills. In 2021, Rural Action officially opened its medical equipment donation program, allowing for thousands of people in Appalachian Ohio to receive vital medical equipment at no cost–and donate it back when they are done.
Using Rural Action’s contacts and organizing power in southeast Ohio, one woman’s efforts grew into a network of churches, community hubs, and other home health aides collecting and distributing equipment–most frequently wheelchairs, rollators (or a rolling walker), and hospital beds. Since 2021, more than 4,000 people have received free medical supplies. In 2025 alone, the program distributed $207,710 worth of equipment for free.
In 2025, the program distributed $207,710 worth of equipment for free. (Photo courtesy of Rural Action)
Rural Action hears consistently from recipients that the possibility of buying new medical equipment is simply out of the question. For Ohioans recovering from a medical procedure or living with a disability, the healthcare costs–including treatment and recovery–can be debilitating. The costs are only exacerbated by the Trump administration’s policies. Medicare premiums increased in 2026 and will increase again in 2027. Additionally, as Republicans allowed federal subsidies for the Affordable Care Act to expire at the end of 2025, millions of Americans lost ACA coverage. Ohio has seen the largest drop-off in ACA enrollment, down 32%. Many of the program’s recipients are also veterans, who face long waits for medical equipment orders.
But Maria Bonner, the current director of the Rural Action program, said that inadequate insurance coverage is not the main problem. It is technicalities in their existing coverage that leave people stranded with debt or without vital equipment. “Even if they have insurance,” she said, “it doesn’t cover this [equipment].” Most insurance plans, for example, only cover one wheelchair every five years. If the wheel breaks after four years, the user is on the hook for the cost of a new one.
One recent recipient of the medical donation program received a motorized wheelchair. He has been diagnosed with stage four cancer and has entered hospice. “His wife is in a nursing home,” Bonner explained, “and this chair will allow him to continue to be able to see his wife, and for several hours each day until he passes, and then it’s going to be used by his wife.”
These are the stories that Bonner and her team encounter as they distribute supplies, slim shafts of light in a bleak healthcare landscape.
Rural Action houses some medical equipment in its own storage, but it mostly relies on a network of churches and other community spaces around southeast Ohio. Churches in particular have storage space, willing volunteers, and a community for both donations and equipment requests. “Churches are instrumental to the network,” Bonner said.
Her team can then coordinate supplies between more than 30 church partners, discuss funding, and provide logistical support for a program that spreads mostly through word of mouth.
One of the many community donation and distribution sites that Rural Action supports is High Street Community Church in New Lexington, Ohio. The program at the church is the project of just one person, Tricia Tilley. As a mother of a child with special needs, she understands the everyday struggle of disabilities and feels called to help however she can.
When residents in a neighboring town began their own medical supplies donation program during the Covid-19 pandemic, Tilley started a collection of equipment in storage space at the church. News of the program spread through word of mouth, and both requests and donations numbers exploded last year. “Our whole community knows about us now.”
Despite the hectic collection and distribution process, Tilley says she always has exactly what she needs. Sometimes knee scooters show up unannounced at the church door just when the collection has run out.
Tilley says her collection of donated supplies can fill in the gaps where insurance companies let people fall through. Oftentimes, she explains, adult diapers are not considered “medically necessary,” and insurers deny coverage. “But you pee your pants a couple times in public and see if it’s not necessary,” Tilley bitterly jokes.
Volunteers, storage space, and knowledge of local communities–churches provide perfect homes for these sorts of donation programs. These churches also offer, at their best, an ethos that prioritizes humans–their health and life–over any financial concerns.
In a healthcare landscape that squeezes every last dime out of its patients, Tilley said, going at it alone is costly; helping one’s neighbor is mandatory. “I just couldn’t imagine working for the other team.”
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