Volunteer Health Clinic Welcome Sight
By Erin Hoover Barnett, The Oregonian, Portland, Ore.
Aug. 18–In the two months since Ismael Garay moved his family to Portland from Oakland, Calif., he has worried about his wife. He knows she needs to see a doctor about a tumor that may have reappeared. But the couple lack health insurance.
So Thursday evening, the couple ventured just a few blocks from their North Portland home to see if what a neighbor had told them about a free clinic opening was true.
The Garays arrived at a small white building tucked between old homes on North Williams Avenue at Blandena Street to see balloons bouncing in the breeze and people milling about in the yard, munching cookies. Inside waited three doctors, two nurses and a social worker — all volunteers, all ready to help.
The North by Northeast Community Health Center is open.
The clinic is the brainchild of Pastor Mary Overstreet Smith of the Powerhouse Temple Church. This longtime pastor’s profile rose last year when she took it upon herself to relocate 40 people from the Katrina-ravaged Gulf Coast to Portland. But she didn’t lose sight of needs closer to home.
She learned that an estimated 613,000 Oregonians lack health coverage, with more than a third of them in the Portland area. And while at least 13 clinics provide some health services to the poor in Multnomah County, the need remains great. So Overstreet Smith took action.
Dr. Jill Ginsberg, a family practice doctor with Kaiser Permanente, called the pastor last November to volunteer with the Katrina survivors. Overstreet Smith had a better idea. She marched Ginsberg down the street to a building the church owns. Perfect for a small clinic.
“There was no reason for me to say no — that I could justify,” Ginsberg said. “It was something that was right in front of me and I couldn’t turn away.”
Shortly after 5 p.m. Thursday, the two women cut the orange ribbon tied across the porch steps with some two dozen neighbors, friends and family looking on.
“It’s a vision foreseen and a dream come true,” the pastor said.
The Garays, both 50, were the first patients to walk up the steps.
Ismael Garay sat down with social worker David Pleiman to talk about how he might qualify for health insurance. Nurse Loris Eastman escorted Linda Garay into an exam room, soon followed by Dr. Claudia Ostermeyer.
Overstreet Smith hired workers and drafted volunteers to transform the building, once used as a bakery cafe, into a reception area, two exam rooms and a cozy waiting room.
Kaiser Permanente, in addition to helping Ginsberg with her malpractice insurance, donated some equipment, and all the volunteer practitioners Thursday are with Kaiser. Legacy Health System is donating lab work, and Fred Meyer is helping Ginsberg provide some medications for free. Ginsberg received a grant that allowed her to hire full-time clinic coordinator Roslyn Farrington. Ginsberg works for free.
Ginsberg had fretted that the clinic — which is only open Thursday evenings — would be swamped the first night. In addition to knocking on doors in the neighborhood, the doctor met with the Humboldt Neighborhood Association. But things started slowly.
“We had our first-date jitters over with in a pretty calm environment,” Ginsberg said.
Emmett Moore, 61, saw the slow start as an opportunity. He came for opening night because he belongs to Overstreet Smith’s church. But while there, he got his blood pressure checked. Moore is insured by the Oregon Health Plan. Although the clinic plans to focus on people without insurance, Ginsberg said the clinic will help with such needs as Moore’s whenever it can.
So Eastman, the nurse, took a seat next to Moore in the waiting room and pulled out her blood pressure cuff. Moore’s reading was high.
They discussed what he should do to lower his blood pressure between now and his next doctor’s appointment in a week. No salt. Get better about taking your pills. And ramp up the exercise.
Meanwhile, Ismael Garay finished talking with the social worker and walked outside to the refreshment table to wait for his wife.
He had also been able to talk with the medical staff and get some medicine to help with swelling in his legs, a painful condition that has bedeviled the retired truck driver. But he was most happy that his wife was getting to meet with a doctor.
Holding a paper cup of sparkling cider, he looked back at the small white building.
“It was really nice,” he said. “It helped a whole lot.”
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Copyright (c) 2006, The Oregonian, Portland, Ore.
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