Parkland Health has launched its first partnership with a community organization to offer primary care. Tuesday, Parkland opened a free clinic in the Jubilee Park neighborhood of Southeast Dallas.
"This partnership between Parkland, Jewish Family Services and Jubilee is revolutionary," says Jubilee Park Community Center President Marissa Castro Mikoy. "We're committed to navigating the monumental task of improving health outcomes for this community together, hand-in-hand. It's going to take all of us."
Castro Mikoy says people in the Jubilee Park neighborhood live an average of 20 years less than Dallas residents north of I-30.
"The Jubilee Park Community Clinic will turn back the clock on health outcomes so our neighbors not only live longer lives but lives well-lived," she says.
The clinic will offer free medical and dental check-ups.
"That's always the best is to see your physician early instead of waiting until it's an emergency because once it's an emergency, things can happen," says Dr. Max McColloster, a primary care doctor who will be working at the clinic.
McColloster says, by catching problems early, they can be treated without the expense that would be incurred by spending time in the emergency room.
"The goal is to have an ongoing relationship with patients in general," he says. "Being able to see them not just in a single visit, but over the course of months and years, that's really where preventive medicine comes into play."
On the second floor, Jewish Family Services will offer mental health counseling, and the neighborhood will have health and wellness programs including cooking and exercise classes.
"We realize just the provision of health care services is not enough," says Parkland CEO Fred Cerise. "So many of the things that contribute to poor health depend on other social conditions."
Cerise says an assessment of community health needs in 2019 showed "great disparities in health outcomes depending on where you lived in Dallas," and Jubilee Park had one of the greatest disparities.
"When we were invited here to look at this and think about the opportunity to put some healthcare services in here, it was a no-brainer for us," Cerise says. "We can bring a healthcare piece and then combine that with all the wraparound services and social services Jewish Family Services does. We think it's just a great model for integrated care that looks at the whole person."
Judge Clay Jenkins says his father died from a heart attack when he was seven years old.
"My own uninsured father suffered a fatal heart attack in front of my sister and I, but his half-brother, who had insurance, went to the cardiologist a week after my father was buried," Jenkins says. "He lived another 43 years because he got the preventive care for his heart that my dad didn't get."
Jenkins says Parkland is working to provide primary care in an area where people may not have reliable transportation to reach a doctor's office farther away.
"You've got to have a place in the community where they can go for a check-up for a cold or problems that are ailing them," he says. "You can catch them early before they become a heart attack, cancer or diabetes. It's easier, and it's cheaper to take care of these conditions before they become an emergency."
Parkland says up to 7,000 people could use the clinic each year.
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