Allan Appel Photo
Forty-year employee Maria Melendez, with the non-surgicalscissors, led the ribbon cutting.
Ten new medical exam rooms. A first-time ever suite of three dental operatories. Two behavior health spaces. And an expanded nurse-midwife program that delivers about 150 babies a year.
And the capacity to serve an additional 4,000 people, most of whom are in great need and under the federal poverty line.
Those were among the stats cited, hailed, and celebrated at the ribbon-cutting ceremony Friday afternoon marking the expansion of the Fair Haven Community Health Center (FHCHC) to a new satellite location, the street-level suite of offices at 50 Grand Ave. in the River Run senior housing complex, within view of the Grand Avenue Bridge.
Carpeted hallway outside one of the examining rooms.
The $2 million expansion of cradle-to-grave service for mostly indigent patients was funded in part by a $1 million grant through a federal program created under the Affordable Care Act, said U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, who was one of the current elected officials, along with FHCHC founder Katrina Clark, former Mayor John DeStefano, and 75 staffers and admirers who attended the festive event.
It’s the first new clinic that FHCHC, which was established in 1971, has opened in 46 years, said Tom Thetford, a FHCHC board member.
The balance of the money was provided through state bonding and private gifts from local individuals and businesses including the United Illuminating Foundation.
The foundation gave $50,000 specifically toward the nurse-midwife program, now headquartered in the new offices. As people filed in after the ceremonies to tour the spiffy new offices, Ellen Wormser (pictured), a nurse-midwife at FHCHC for 30 years, stood by a photograph of her and a baby she recently delivered. She also had delivered the baby’s mother and the baby’s father.
And rather than bricks and mortar and labs and equipment, what that feat represented — the family care over generations to people who need it most — was what was truly being hailed at the ribbon cutting.
“A vital institution, at the heart and life of this neighborhood since the 1970s, you’ve kept generations of New Haveners healthy,” said DeLauro.
Chief Executive Officer Dr. Suzanne Lagarde said of the patients served: “They face problems that could challenge all of us.”
By that she meant the clinic needs to and now has more capacity to help its patients dealing with “wellness beyond the absence of disease: obesity, diabetes [twice the state average], and anxiety and other mental health issues.
“Who among us wouldn’t be anxious if we had to worry about the safety of our children, whether we’ll be evicted, or deported. [In all these regards] we’re here for our patients,” she said.
When the space was being designed, Lagarde said she asked her staff what kinds of furnishings and appointments and other qualities it should have by asking them what they themselves would want to see when visiting their own doctors.
Nunez, foreground, and Aponte in the nurse-midwife office.
Some of the results were enumerated by Erica Aponte and Johanna Nunez (pictured), two young nurses who had begun at FHCHC as young assistants about a decade ago, and now were full-fledged nurses.
“Space for strollers,” said Aponte.
“Colors that are warm,” someone else added.
She was referring to the carpeting, which is more home-like than industrial, and that also has designs on it that are directional for patients as they make their way to the various medical stations.
Aponte said it’s not unusual for a family to visit and while a child is being seen by one doctor or nurse, the parents too are receiving care, reducing transportation and anxiety costs for the family.
One of the good things about New Haven.....and money appropriately spent.