Washington Park Clinic
Washington Park Children's Free Health Clinic Celebrates Ten Year Anniversary
By Katie Sonneborn and Rachel Gilbert, MS 2 Co-Coordinators
Katie Sonneborn, MS 2
Rachel Gilbert, MS 2
Washington Park Children’s Free Health Clinic (WPCC) is going strong in 2007, ten years since first opening its doors. In January, Pritzker MS 10s took over clinic leadership, excited to make our mark! This year’s student board is: John Paro, Volunteer Coordinator; Mike Osborne, Supplies Coordinator; Josephine Kim and Elaine Lin, Referrals Coordinators; Lindsay Finger and Eric Wagner, Outreach Coordinators; Katie Sonneborn and Rachel Gilbert, Clinic Coordinators.
In 2004, WPCC moved into the Chicago Youth Programs (CYP) building, and this relationship with CYP affords us tremendous opportunities: free transportation for patients to and from the clinic; valuable access to community members and programs; and contact with people already working throughout the community.
Our year started in December with a Christmas party for CYP and WPCC kids. Thanks to the generosity of University of Chicago community members, especially Dr. Barbara Kirschner, the party was a huge success! We provided food, activities, and gifts for all 100 kids who attended. Our top priority this year is targeting families in need of our services. We’ve begun dialogues to establish solid, long-lasting relationships with local schools, churches, shelters, and youth organizations in an effort to accomplish this goal.
“Washington Park Children’s Free Health Clinic represents a tradition of leadership among Pritzker medical students in serving the underserved. It is unique among student-run clinics across the nation in that students truly reflect upon the clinic’s mission and run every aspect of it from creating community relationships, reaching out to patients, recruiting volunteer physicians and obtaining supplies like immunizations from Vaccines for Children.
What I personally love about the clinic is that it gets students out of the classroom and into a safe community setting and introduces them to the organizational aspects of medicine —how we approach communities, organize our services, and track how well we are doing. I want them to have early exposure to how important it is for physicians to participate in all aspects of the delivery of quality healthcare, especially to underserved populations.”
—Alyna Chien, MD ‘01, MS
University of Chicago, Department of Pediatrics
Co-Founder, Washington Park Children’s Free Health Clinic
In 2007, Dr. Chien published Community Health Center Quality Improvement: A Systematic Review and Future Directions for Research in Progress in Community Health Partnerships.
WPCC also works to connect patients and their families to primary care homes providing complete, comprehensive health services. To that end, WPCC is establishing referral partnerships with local ACCESS clinics. Thus far, we have relationships with Booker Family, Ashland Family, and Grand Boulevard Family Health Centers. Clinic managers have been very receptive and welcoming to our goals. To create balanced care for our patients, we are encouraging our patients to seek regular care at full-service community health centers while we continue to refine and expand the services we provide. We are also still enrolling kids without health insurance in AllKids, the umbrella organization for Kidcare and Medicaid for minors in Illinois.
In 2006, we became certified by Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments to offer six lab tests: rapid Strep A, pregnancy, urinalysis, hemoglobin, lead, and glucose. This year, we hope to perfect the execution of these to ensure high quality care. We also continue to offer PPDs (TB screening) and multiple vaccinations: MMR, Pediarix, Hib, DTap, Tdap, Adult Influenza, Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B, IPV, MCV4, PCV-7, Rotavirus, and soon Varicella and HPV. Chicago Public Health’s Vaccines for Children has been supplying our free vaccines for seven years. We had 150 patient encounters at WPCC during 2006 —70% were physicals and 42% included immunizations.
We would be unable to do any of this, however, without our fabulous volunteers. For their continued support and service, we thank all the medical student, pediatric resident, and attending physician volunteers, Drs. H. Barrett Fromme, Heather Johnston, William Corey Jordan, Gina Lowell, Tamara Nix, Joel Schwab, and Shawn Smith, and especially founders Dr. Tom Warne and Dr. Alyna Chien. Our volunteers are our backbone. With the continual support of the University community, Washington Park Children’s Free Health Clinic will no doubt make an impact for years to come!
