SAN DIEGO COUNTY: Lincoln Park To See New Health Center

      Through a "collaborative effort by the Children's and Paradise Valley hospitals and the Comprehensive Health Center," the Lincoln Park area is getting a new community health center. The San Diego Union-Tribune reports that the health center, an "important part of the county's effort to increase health care for the indigent ... will bring more physicians and nurses to an area of the county that is classified as medically underserved." The clinic will focus on "primary and pediatric care, immunizations and women's health services," and will offer a teen clinic and house a laboratory. Financed in part by a $300,000 grant from the Parker Foundation and Children's and Paradise Valley hospitals, the clinic's full-time medical staff will try to "absorb 10,000 patient visits in [its] first year" and will be able to refer patients to specialists practicing in the same building as the new clinic.

Pressing Need
      Currently, the "nearest existing clinic" for residents of Oak Park, Valencia Park, Chollas View, Encanto and Paradise Hills is "the Comprehensive Health Center on Ocean View Boulevard, which is a long bus ride away." Clinic director Dr. Nora Faine said, "Other areas of the county have a patient-physician ratio of 250 to 1 to 2,500 to 1. This area has a ratio of 5,000 to 1, and that equates with longer waits, less opportunity for health care, more apathy about prevention and increased amount of illness." She noted that "43% of the patients in the area are children living at the poverty level." Diane Moss, director of the family services group Project New Village, said the clinic "represents an increased capacity for this community to take care of itself." Former head of the San Diego Medical Society Dr. Richard Butcher said the new clinic "will go a long way toward disseminating important illness prevention information" such as proper diet and exercise (Clark, 3/7).