New Haven Independent

Joyner was on hand Wednesday morning for the festive opening of Dixwell Children Services at 226 Dixwell Ave. The new center will combine primary care doctors with social workers and psychologists and psychiatrists in the same second-floor suite. That’ll make it more likely that a child who comes in for help with a sore throat — and turns out to need mental-health counseling — will end up getting it.

The new center is the latest outpost of the Hill Health Center, one of the New Haven’s two longstanding community health institutions in poor and working-class neighborhoods (the other being Fair Haven Community Health Center). Sandra Joyner was at the opening because she oversees what are now Hill Health’s two children’s clinics. (She’s on the right in the photo, beside Hill Health Medical Director Karin Michels.)

Joyner had Cornell Scott on her mind for several reasons. Scott (pictured) died on Monday. And Scott was the man most responsible for Hill Health Center’s growth in New Haven. Scott ran Hill Health from its inception in 1968 until this year. That’s right: for four decades.

The opening of the Dixwell clinic was just the latest Hill Health Center expansion to take place under his guidance. What started as a single-building clinic in the Hill has grown to a network of busy health centers in West Haven, Ansonia, and New Haven’s Dixwell neighborhood.

The new children’s clinic is upstairs from two other existing Hill Health outposts in the 226 Dixwell building: a first-floor primary care center for adults; and the basement home of “Village of Power,” a celebrated program for homeless women struggling with mental health problems and/or addiction.

Standing amid the patients and nurses and clinicians filling the hallway outside the new clinic, Joyner credited Scott’s vision for the day’s event. She called him a personal inspiration. “His legacy,” she said, “is to bring quality care to the community, especially the underprivileged. It’s hard to put into words what he put into that place.”

Hill Health’s chief operating officer, Gary Spinner (pictured), described the new ground broken by the Dixwell clinic.

For starters, it links “behavior services” (mental health help) with basic medical care. Studies have shown that people with mental illness die 20 years earlier than other people, he said. That’s because people with mental illness often have no connection to primary care doctors.

Connecticut has been promoting the idea of locating the two kinds of care near each other. This new Dixwell children’s clinic goes further: It puts both kinds of caregivers in one suite, working alongside each other.

Say a child comes in with a runny nose or other physical ailment, Spinner said. The child sees a primary care doctor. sometimes it’ll become clear in that visit that the child needs to see a social worker or psychologist, for a different reason. In the past, the child would be referred to another caregiver somewhere else. The child doesn’t always make it there. Now, the doctor can pull the social worker or psychologist right into the room.

“It breaks down the sigma of sending somebody someplace where they may or may not go in,” Spinner said. “We can make sure these kids and their families don’t fall through the cracks.”

Another change with the new clinic: Previously, kids mixed with adults seeking primary care doctors at Hill Health’s first-floor clinic at 226 Dixwell. Now downstairs will be just for adults. And the upstairs clinic will see only children. It’ll be more “child friendly” a setting, Spinner said.

The Northford Women’s Club helped make it especially friendly by painting two murals on the new clinic’s walls, including the one pictured.