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Related Link: Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
By Will Fay
An inner-city health clinic organized by two professors from the Indiana University School of Nursing has received a $700,000 grant to expand its services to the poor and homeless.
The Broadway Shalom Wellness Center, a nurse-managed, church-based clinic in the Mapleton-Fall Creek neighborhood of Indianapolis, will get $350,000 during the next four years from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a health-care endowment based in Princeton, N.J.
The Indianapolis-based Health Foundation, the Indiana State Department of Health, the Indianapolis Foundation, the St. Paul's Endowment for Mission and Ministry and the Pilgrim Lutheran Church Benefaction Fund will combine to match the foundation's grant.
The clinic, located at 609 E. 29th St., is funded by ISDH in cooperation with the IU School of Nursing, based at IUPUI.
The money will help open new clinic sites, hire more health-care providers, expand illness-care and health-promotion programs, and improve tracking of indigent patient health records, said Sandra Burgener and Su Moore, School of Nursing faculty members and the clinic's co-directors.
The professors say many inner-city poor have little or no access to health-promotion or disease-prevention services, such as screening for cancer and HIV/AIDS, substance abuse counseling or early pregnancy and infant care.
The grant will help Broadway Shalom tackle those problems.
Proposed additional clinic sites include Roberts Park United Methodist Church, 401 N. Delaware St., and Mount Zion Baptist Church, 3500 N. Graceland Ave. The Mount Zion location is critical, Burgener and Moore said, because primary health-care services through clinics are limited in the western section of the inner city.
New staff will include two part-time doctors -- a pediatrician and a specialist in internal medicine -- a full-time nurse practitioner, a part-time nurse specializing in spousal abuse and substance addiction counseling, and a part-time project director.
Smoking cessation programs, immunization efforts and nutrition education will be expanded, as will other health-promotion activities such as HIV and cancer screening.
A computer system linked with the Wishard Hospital and Regenstrief Clinic will help the center improve tracking of indigent patient's medical records.
The grant also will help "marginally homeless" women and children get medical and other assistance through the Gennesaret Free Clinics.