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1st appeared
02 December
1999 New Nurse-Run Clinic Offers Affordable Services in the Mission
Their new clinic, called Valencia Health Services, employs nurse practitioners who offer effective and culturally sensitive health care in the diverse neighborhood. The clinic, located at 1647 Valencia St., combines UCSF's expertise in pediatric, women's health, and family primary care and SFSU's experience in teen services, case management, mental health and community collaboration. An open house for neighborhood residents, clients and colleagues will be held on Wednesday, December 8, to celebrate the new services and partnership. Events for both children and adults begin at 3 p.m. and include health screenings, educational workshops, face painting, storytelling, food and more. At 5:30 p.m., community leaders and university officials will lead an opening ceremony. "The new Valencia Health Services has already begun to collaborate with other service providers in the Mission as it expands to become a vital resource to residents," says Charlotte Ferretti, RN, EdD, CCM, and professor in SFSU's School of Nursing. "We are working to address the needs of an underserved and ethnically diverse population while preparing and encouraging health profession students to work in these communities." Opening the clinic is the latest in a series of steps toward providing comprehensive health services to Mission District residents. The UCSF School of Nursing began serving children in the area by acquiring the Valencia Pediatric Practice in 1993 and will now expand its services, with the help of SFSU, to include young adults by January 2000. UCSF nurse practitioners, physicians and graduate students currently provide a range of medical services such as health promotion and disease prevention, screening examinations, nutrition counseling, and vision and hearing assessments. San Francisco State nurses will focus on case management for high-risk clients. They will specifically target adolescents who all too often fall through the cracks of the health care system because they don’t know where or how to access adolescent-sensitive care, Ferretti said. "The facility's expansion from a pediatric clinic to adolescent and adult care demonstrates nursing's focus on serving the entire family unit and their health needs within their community," said Lea Ann Bernick, MHA, UCSF senior administrative analyst in Family Health Care Nursing and the Valencia Health Services practice manager. "As a neighborhood health center, the clinic will host health education programs and link residents to other community services such as mammogram testing, prenatal care, and HIV services." The expansion of the practice is particularly important in the Mission neighborhood, where a number of low-income residents may be disenfranchised from the medical system because of cultural differences, language barriers, or poverty. About 60 percent of the clients are Hispanic, 30 percent African-American, 5 percent Cauasian, and the rest are of Filipino and Somoan descent. Approximately 70 percent of the clients are covered by Medi-Cal.
In addition to offering community-based health care, the center will provide crucial learning experiences to students from a wide variety of health- and social services-related fields. "One of the center's goals is to encourage students to continue a commitment to the underserved following graduation," said Bernick. Links: San Francisco State University School of Nursing Source: Rebecca Sladek Nowlis, UCSF News Services |
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DAYBREAK | ARCHIVES | CALENDAR
| CAMPUS NOTES Copyright ©1999 Regents
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In
an age of medical cutbacks, nursing school faculty from UCSF and San
Francisco State University have become partners in providing family
primary health care in San Francisco's Mission District.
"Provision
of culturally competent care is of major importance," said Pilar
Bernal de Pheils, RN, MS, FNP, UCSF associate clinical professor in
the School of Nursing and one of the nurse faculty providers at Valencia
Health Services. The majority of nurses and physician providers who
work at Valencia Health Services speak Spanish and all ancillary staff
are bicultural and bilingual.