Washington Heights Clinic

After a wonderful morning at visiting and speaking with many executive members of the Community Health Network, we set out to see how a clinic within the network operated first hand. We took the train all the way to Washington Heights, an area of Manhattan pretty far uptown. There, we met Jonathan Santos, the Health Center director for the Washington Heights Clinic. Jonathan was kind enough to not only show us the current clinic being used, but also the new clinic that will open in the coming months. 

            Jonathan had only been working at the clinic for a few months, but he was already doing great work. Through his oversight, the clinic had fulfilled a long-time partnership with Community League of the Heights (CLOTH). This was truly an amazing concept for us to learn about. The health clinic would be located in the basement of CLOTH’s 6-12 school, Community Health Academy of the Heights. The idea behind this is not only could the students who attended that school get health care from the clinic downstairs, but also gain exposure to working in the clinic, in hopes of one day pursing a career in the medical and/or health-related field. It was great for the scholars to see the beginnings of this budding partnership.

            Though much work still had to be done, the Community League clinic already did a great job of integrating the community members in their staff and reaching many families and teens to fulfill their needs. Primarily, Jonathan spoke of them as an advocate and resource for the community’s family planning needs. Through their Teen’s PACT program, many teens were getting involved in making PSA’s educating their peers about family planning options. The health center also had a “CINDY” program, where teens could anonymously come in for their sexual health and family planning needs anonymously, only being contacted via a postcard that read “Visit Cindy” so they teens would know if they saw this postcard, they were needed at the clinic. Through this program, safe sex practices and sexual health were being tackled on the forefront. The Scholars were thrilled to see what an integral part of the community the health center had become and hope to visit again next year when the school partnership is up and running.