On Monday the Georgia Senate plans to hold its first study committee meeting on barriers to health care access in the state.

A star addition to the panel is Dr. Karen Kinsell, who runs a clinic in Clay County. Her clinic serves as the only real health care many residents there ever see.

She has often been interviewed by media over the years, but nothing hit home like a first-person narrative published online this summer by the national magazine The New Yorker. In it, she detailed the reality of uninsured patients in rural Georgia — and her reality as essentially a volunteer.

The committee will be chaired by Sen. Renee Unterman, a Republican of Buford, and includes some state health officials and practitioners. Its first meeting is to be held at 10:00AM at the Capitol in Atlanta and to overview nursing and provider shortages.

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Carleigh Knight (left) and her sister, Natalie Rogovin, look at Christmas ornaments while shopping at Kudzu Antiques + Modern in Decatur on Tuesday, Nov. 25, 2025. (Natrice Miller/AJC)

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