Growing Clinic for the Poor to Get New Home

The sole health clinic serving low-income residents of the Santa Clarita Valley will receive a boost next month when it moves into a new facility next to Val Verde Park.

Volunteer crews have been working since December to renovate a battered building along San Martinez Road, west of the city of Santa Clarita, to be the new home of the Samuel Dixon Family Health Center, which currently rents an annex to a local church.

The clientele of the clinic, the only one in the area that accepts Medi-Cal for routine treatment, has grown by more than 175%, from 835 in 1991 to 2,313 in 1992, clinic officials said. Figures for the first two months of this year indicate that the increase is continuing.

“People would rather come here because they know they can be seen in a friendly environment,” said Peggy Freeman, executive director of the nonprofit clinic.

About 90% of patients who visited the clinic last year paid through some type of public assistance program or took advantage of the sliding scale offered by the clinic.

More than half the patients were under the age of 15, Freeman said, and the great majority of patients received some type of preventive care.

“This new facility allows us to help the people in our community when things get rough,” said Edwin Brown, president of the board of directors of the center. Brown was instrumental in saving the 13-year-old clinic when it was almost closed in 1990, after its main financial supporter withdrew.

The new building, which was purchased with the help of an $80,000 federal grant administered through the county, will offer three examination rooms, a screening room, two offices, two restrooms and a reception area. The building was purchased for $160,000.

The new facility, Freeman said, would allow for increased patient confidentiality. The old site required patients to walk through the waiting room after providing a urinalysis sample in the restroom.

“We’ve been working under some really trying conditions,” Freeman said, standing in her cramped office under a stucco ceiling that sagged from a leaky roof.

The clinic has budgeted $25,000 for remodeling its new site, which was built in the 1930s as Val Verde’s first church, Brown said. Most of the materials and labor, however, have been donated by local businesses.

“This is a job for the community and helping people,” said Robert Gall, a general contractor who volunteered his labor for the project. “In a depressed economy, this is something to do. It keeps me busy.”