Christmas is a challenging time for many families. Today St. Anthony’s Free Medical Clinic and McKesson Corporate Citizens Department will give out hundreds of toys, beautifully wrapped and age appropriate, to families in need.

St. Anthony’s Free Medical Clinic is one of the many free, life-sustaining programs and services of St. Anthony Foundation that helps to heal individuals and families. The Clinic, which is the only free pediatric clinic in the Tenderloin, provides over 12,000 patient visits annually, of which approximately 25% are pediatric visits. St. Anthony Foundation is not funded by federal, state, or local government money, and is entirely supported by private donations.

WHEN: TODAY, DECEMBER 22, 2010
1:00PM to 4:30 PM
WHERE: St. Anthony’s Free Medical Clinic
150 Golden Gate Avenue
WHAT: TOY GIVEAWAY
(for patients of the St, Anthony Free Medical Clinic)

CONTACT: Francis Aviani, 510-301-4634

St. Anthony Free Medical Clinic is proud to announce the launch of new patient Walking Groups! Regular exercise is an important part of healthy living for everyone, so all of our patients are invited to participate in these weekly staff-led treks. Each walking route has been mapped out on pedometers so patients can see exactly how many steps they take during an excursion. Walking Groups incorporate health education with social exercise to teach patients about wellness and nutrition while showing them ways to attain their fitness goals in their own neighborhood – and have fun doing it!  St. Anthony Free Medical Clinic is excited to offer this exercise program to our community, in particular our diabetic patients. Special thanks to Sports Basement for their support in helping us promote health in the Tenderloin!

As Week of Caring continues, today is Diabetes Outlier’s Day at St. Anthony Free Medical Clinic — a day where we dedicate the entire afternoon solely to diabetic patients to make sure they are caught up on all their medical needs. Outliers are patients who have uncontrolled high blood sugar or who have not been in to fulfill a variety of preventative health checks like mental health visits, glaucoma screenings, or foot screenings. St. Anthony Free Medical Clinic has one of the most state of the art chronic care facilities in the San Francisco Tenderloin — and all of our patients can access this care free of charge.

Our podiatrist will be on site today screening diabetic patients for potentially limb-threatening foot problems. Diabetics are at high risk for foot complications such as nerve damage, foot ulcers, and poor circulation which, if left untreated, can lead to irreversible foot damage and in the worst cases amputation. Our patients do not have health insurance they often come in with untreated injuries or illnesses that have compromised their foot health and are in need of podiatric management and custom orthotics.

In response to the orthotic needs of our community, SuperFeet Orthotics has stepped up and made an incredibly generous commitment to our patients here at St. Anthony Free Medical Clinic. Every month, SuperFeet Orthotics donates standard and custom orthotics to The Clinic so that our patients have access to the medical supplies they need to maintain their mobility and stay healthy.

A big thank you to SuperFeet Orthotics for their tremendous donation, and to our volunteers who are here to help out Clinic staff during Week of Caring!

St. Anthony’s has a whole new team of volunteers this week as part of the annual Week of Caring.  This year we’re welcoming nearly 200 volunteers from nine different companies including Wells Fargo, Ernst & Young, Chevron, BRE Properties, PriceWaterhouse Coopers, and Federal Reserve Bank, all rallying together to give back to the community.

During this week volunteers will help serve more than 13,000 meals in St. Anthony Dining Room, prepare clothes for 200 individuals and families at the Free Clothing Program and provide one-on-one guidance and support to folks coming in to learn computer skills in the Tenderloin Tech Lab.  We even have a group lending a hand in the Free Medical Clinic, (during one of our Diabetes Outliers Days, we’ll tell you more about that tomorrow).

We are so excited to be able to offer these bonding experiences to groups, and happy to have the extra hands to help out in our programs.  With the holidays coming up there will be plenty more projects and volunteer opportunities for groups, so if you’ve been trying to find an activity for your work, social or church group give St. Anthony’s a ring.

We’d love to have you.

I hated to wake her up, but I wanted to be sure she’d be OK with being in the photo about to be taken. When she awoke she greeted me with a smile and a laugh. I asked her how she was doing and as he giggled and picked away at the muffin beside her.

“I’m great. God is so good.” She said with grin.

I was floored by her gratitude. Here was a beautiful young woman with no material goods to her name but the well worn and unwashed clothes on her yet rich with positivity and a spiritual connection.

She was there to get a tuberculosis (T.B.) test, as one is needed every 6 months to stay in San Francisco’s shelter programs. It was obvious that she hadn’t been getting enough rest, as she kept drifting in and out of consciousness during her visit to St. Anthony Free Medical Clinic.

“Can I get something saying I was here today for this test? I need it for the shelter.” She asked Medical Assistant Jaime Martinez. He got her all the proper documentation she would need and wished her well as she left the Clinic.

St. Anthony Free Medical Clinic began nearly 60 years ago in response to a T.B. outbreak in San Francisco. Almost 6 decades later we are meeting those needs, along with hundreds more, in concert with the city of San Francisco and our poor and homeless neighbors to keep our community alive and healthy.

According to a UCSF study, obesity rates have dropped in Caucasian and Asian children and leveled out for Hispanic/Latino children for the first time in 30 years. Though this may point out successes in recent public health campaigns aimed at reaching youth it also highlights the fact that campaigns are not reaching all children: obesity rates in African American and Native American children continue to rise.

The study states that 20 percent of California schoolchildren were obese and 3.6 percent were severely obese as of 2008. Severely obese children are at high risk of experiencing life-threatening health complications such as diabetes and hypertension.

At St. Anthony Free Medical Clinic we now have an obesity treatment and management program for our pediatric patients and their families in response to the growing number of overweight children in our community. Diet and nutrition are crucial in healthy childhood development; limited access to nutritious food and poor education on how to make healthy food choices leave many in our community at a disadvantage.

Clinicians here at St. Anthony Free Medical Clinic have begun focusing care on children who qualify as overweight and obese in order to medically manage their health and weight-loss plans. We recognize that children are impacted by the health of their family members, thus families of overweight children are also enrolled in the obesity management program. We believe treating families holistically so that all who are involved in a child’s life receive the tools necessary to make healthy lifestyle choices, such as nutrition education and weight management education, is vital to successful weight management for our low income, uninsured pediatric patients.

Asthma in the Tenderloin
The Tenderloin has the highest citywide rate for ambulatory hospitalizations associated with COPD (Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) and the second highest rate for asthma. According to a 2007 UCLA Health Policy Research Brief, one in six of California’s 2.8 million residents with active asthma live below poverty level. In addition to having poorer overall health, low-income residents also miss more school and work because of asthma, visit the emergency department for asthma care more often, and experience more frequent symptoms.

“Tenderloin residents live in old, poorly maintained buildings whose dust, mold, and other environmental factors dramatically increase asthma incidents.” noted St. Anthony Free Medical Clinic Director, Dr. Ana Valdés. “We try to address those factors through education, active medical care, and asthma management techniques.”

St. Anthony Free Medical Clinic
Established in 1956, the St. Anthony Free Medical Clinic is the first Free Medical Clinic in the United States. The clinic provides 12,000 patient care visits annually, nearly 3,000 of which are chronic care visits, Asthmatic patient account for about 9% of total visits.

The San Francisco General Hospital in partnership with the Avon Foundation were on-site here at St. Anthony Foundation administering mammograms for St. Anthony Free Medical Clinic patients  through the Comprehensive Breast Care Center. This “mammo-mobile” provides vital screening services to undeserved women around San Francisco in an effort to prevent breast cancer through early detection.

Women who receive primary care at St. Anthony Free Medical Clinic are given clinical breast exams as part of routine health exams and are signed up for yearly mammogram screenings through the Comprehensive Breast Care Center.

Since its inception in 2004, the Avon Comprehensive Breast Care Center has provided over 34,000 breast screenings and more than 2,000 breast health procedures. Diagnostic procedures include digital mammography, ultrasound-guided biopsy, stereotactic biopsy, localization procedures, as well as clinical, health education and case coordination services.

The “mammo-mobile” will be making monthly on-site visits to St. Anthony Free Medical Clinic to ensure  patients have ccess to these life saving services. It is community partnerships like these  strengthen the safety net and make health care available to all.

There are those who charge that services in the Tenderloin attract poor people to the Tenderloin. They think this makes the problems of the Tenderloin worse. But there are so many ways that St. Anthony’s and our partners in crime are good for the neighborhood and the city at large. Take the St. Anthony Free Medical Clinic, for example.

The Institute of Medicine estimates that lack of health insurance leads to more than 18,000 deaths a year. According to a study done by the Commonwealth Fund, this makes lack of insurance the sixth-leading cause of death among people ages 25 to 64—less than cancer, heart disease, injuries, and suicide, but more than HIV/AIDS or diabetes.

Without primary care, low-income, uninsured patients are less likely to discover medical problems early and more likely to delay seeking help until the problem is severe and requires emergency attention. Even if an illness doesn’t need emergency help, the emergency room is where most low-income people go when they’re sick or hurt. One study by the Commonwealth Fund found that of 2 million emergency room visits a year, 33% were for health conditions that did not require immediate care or could have been treated during a physician visit.

St. Anthony Free Medical Clinic provides those physicians. A doctors’ care at the Clinic helps relieve pressure on San Francisco’s ER facilities and reduces the state and county reimbursements for these costs, which are constantly up for reduction anyway in a state that continues to struggle with debt subsidies.

All of our full time doctors provide primary care: annual adult and well-child checkups, adult and pediatric immunizations, GYN visits for women, nutrition counseling, preventative health education, adult and pediatric lab tests, medication counseling, and evaluation for referrals to specialists.

We provide annual physicals necessary for our adult patients to get job clearance and for our pediatric patients to get school clearance. We help them take better care of themselves and manage their own health between visits. We empower patients, providing them with the primary care they need to stay healthy and offering healthcare support in times when they are not, all free of charge.

We think that’s good for the neighborhood and for the city. It’s surely good for the people who live here.