East Palo Alto Clinic Opens With Goal of Serving Area’s Diverse Population

To provide services that have been missing in East Palo Alto since 1997 -- when the area's only community clinic closed -- the South County Community Health Center opened last month with the goal of serving the community's diverse population, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. To better care for the city's predominately Latino, African-American and Pacific Islander population, the clinic will provide a racially diverse staff. Dr. Margarita Pereyda, the clinic's medical director, said, "We're striving to be representative of the people we are serving. We really want to mimic our population. We want to work with local people, people who live in the community." Funded by federal grants, the not-for-profit clinic expects to serve primarily low-income and uninsured residents. Until the construction of a permanent facility is completed within the next five years, the clinic will operate 15 exam rooms in modular buildings, which are equipped to handle about 5,000 patients annually. South County Executive Director Robert Lewis said that a similar clinic that opened in Menlo Park in 1997 was "overwhelmed" within one year of its opening, and that he "expects the same thing" in East Palo Alto (Estrella, San Francisco Chronicle, 1/11).