By Rachel Sheier, California Healthline, June 11, 2020
A small band of volunteers started the Marin City Health and Wellness Center nearly two decades ago with a doctor and a retired social worker making house calls in public housing high-rises. It grew into a beloved community resource and a grassroots experiment in African American health care.
“It was truly a one-stop shop,” said Ebony McKinley, a lifelong resident of this tightknit, historically black enclave several miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge. “And it was ours.”
By early 2020, the center had a multimillion-dollar annual operation with two clinics, in Marin City and Bayview-Hunters Point, a predominantly black community in an industrial section of southeastern San Francisco. The clinics offered primary care geared to low-income residents of color, as well as access to dentists, psychotherapists, a substance abuse clinic and chiropractor.
In Marin City, ladies shouldering empty tote bags lined up on Tuesday afternoons to score free fresh produce at the clinic’s weekly Food Pharmacy program ― a big hit in a neighborhood where for years grocery shopping meant stopping by the dollar store for a couple of pork chops and maybe a withered, overpriced apple from CVS.
Comments (0)