Clinic Fills Void for the Poor : Hart Street Health Center in Canoga Park has been providing services to Valley schoolchildren since 1953.

It was 16-year-old Rosa Gonzalez’s first trip to a dentist. No one had ever talked to her about prevention, and she had never had a checkup.

After a small piece of her tooth broke off at school, the campus nurse referred her to the Hart Street Health Center in Canoga Park. Rosa needed major work--a root canal--and would soon return to have three cavities filled. Her mother knew how to get to the health center; she had taken Rosa there for glasses.

Martha Gonzalez, 42, Rosa’s mother, has five other children, and she says she would not know what to do without the clinic. Her husband works as a chauffeur and she doesn’t have the money to pay for health care, she says.

That’s the void the Hart Street Health Center has filled since 1953. While access to health care is a hot topic in Washington, those at the center say getting health care to San Fernando Valley schoolchildren is no new challenge.

“The need is greater now, though, than it ever has been,” says Carol Taylor, vice president and director of student aid for the local Parent Teacher Student Assn. District.

A joint venture between the Los Angeles Unified School District and the PTSA, the clinic meets the dental, vision and some medical needs of the school district’s students who have no health insurance coverage and limited family income. The center provides ophthalmology, optometry, immunizations and limited cardiac and orthopedic diagnostic services for the West Valley’s 52 elementary schools, 10 middle schools and nine high schools.

Last year, more than 2,000 students were evaluated or treated at the center, and 836 pairs of low-cost eyeglasses were provided. Parents are asked to pay on a sliding scale, but the PTSA’s needy children’s fund often picks up the tab, Taylor said.

The first time Taylor visited the clinic she was hooked on volunteering for the operation. Taylor recalled the joyous look of a 5-year-old girl as she tried on her first pair of glasses--and could see. “The mother had tears in her eyes,” Taylor said. “The little girl just said, ‘Wow!’ ”

Some of the clinic’s dentists and physicians volunteer; others are paid. The center, which operates on a $325,000 budget, is funded through PTSA donations, the LAUSD, the United Way, and this year, by a $25,000 grant from Kaiser Permanente in Woodland Hills.

Daisy Sperman, a Santa Monica-based optometrist, has been working at the health center every Wednesday for the last two years because she finds the work rewarding.

Sperman got her first pair of glasses through a similar clinic in Memphis, Tenn., when she was in the third grade. A local optometry college did free screenings in the underprivileged area where she lived, and the glasses helped her succeed in school.

But the Hart Street Health Center is less than ideal, she said. Equipment is not state of the art, and if children need antibiotics or other medication, their parents have to get them at a pharmacy at regular price. Students who need more in-depth evaluations must be referred elsewhere, most often to the Los Angeles County-Olive View Medical Center in Sylmar or to Jules Stein Eye Institute at UCLA, which sometimes picks up the entire cost of needed services, said Lupe Mark, center manager.

Because many children who are referred to the clinics have not had routine care, their problems are often complicated. Anit Natt, a dentist who has been working for the center for the last four months while trying to establish her dental practice in Chatsworth, said she frequently encounters children with infections and deep decay, necessitating root canals and extractions.

“We do what we can, as much as we can,” said Mark, the center’s manager. “We’re trying to catch the kids who have nothing.”

Where and When Location: Hart Street Health Center, 21006 Hart St., Canoga Park. How: Students should be referred by their school nurse or school doctor; they must be enrolled in an LAUSD school. Hours: Available by appointment. Price: $8. A $25 deposit is requested to order glasses. Call: (818) 883-0360.