SAN DIEGO (KGTV) – A City Heights health clinic is celebrating a major milestone of providing medical care to those with limited access to the vital resource at a church on University Avenue.
“The Health Promotion Center is a free clinic that's run by Point Loma Nazarene University School of Nursing. We're located in City Heights, and we provide free primary care services to the community,” Dr. Kristen Kellogg, Clinic Director of Health Promotion Center, said.“The clinic is primarily run by nursing faculty and by nurse practitioners, and then we have students that are here training with us.”
The Health Promotion Center is celebrating 25 years of being open, providing free primary care to the community and training future nurses.
“It was an eye-opening experience. Being here was really an opportunity to really get to serve in our community,” Korynn Mattson, a former extern at Health Promotion Center, said. “During our nursing clinicals are, they're primarily in the hospital, so you don't get a lot of opportunities to see the outpatient centers.”
It’s been an important resource for those who may experience barriers to getting much-needed medical care.
“A lot of times we see people come in who have lost their health insurance for whatever reason, or they're in like a really complicated social situation,” Kellogg said. “And we're sort of able to pull all of that away and just show up and, meet people where they're at and try to address the needs that they have.”
On Saturday, the clinic and those who have worked here are celebrating a quarter of a century of being able to address the community’s needs.
“We have a really beautiful system here with the university and the church that allows us to do this, but really just the feat of being able to continue to do this really amazing work, for this amount of time is really incredible,” Kellogg said.
There’s hope the next 25 years can be just as incredible for the community amid changes to the health care landscape.
“One of our first goals is sort of we see this increased need coming down the line, and we're trying to prepare for that,” Kellogg said.
“I think for students 25 years out from now till then, everybody who rotates to this clinic, we really hope that they find a passion to want to care for people,” Elias Escamilla, a former extern at Health Promotion Center, said.
