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SFSU Public Affairs Press Release


Published by the Public Affairs Office at San Francisco State University, Diag Center.

#085; For Immediate Release
Contact: Ligeia Polidora (415) 338-1665
e-mail: pubcom@sfsu.edu

New Valencia Health Center: SFSU & UCSF team up to serve health needs of Mission District residents

New expanded clinic will offer Mission residents affordable comprehensive health services.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA, June 15, 1999 -- When the "Valencia Pediatric, Adolescent and Family Services Center" opens in mid-July, it will be the Mission neighborhood's first University operated, full service clinic with the goal of meeting a wide range of residents' health and mental health needs. For the Schools of Nursing at San Francisco State University (SFSU), and the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) opening the clinic is the latest in a series of steps toward providing c omprehensive health services to Mission district residents.

SFSU previously operated a clinic in Mission High School that spawned a series of relationships with a wide variety of community-based health agencies. Now University professors and students seek to bring the same magic to a much larger neighborhood health clinic. The Valencia Center will combine the talents and resources of UCSF's pre-existing pediatric clinic and SFSU's adolescent and adult health clinic. The new Valencia Center promises neighborhood residents a future of accessible and high quali ty health care at low cost.

The increase in the size and programs offered by the new Valencia Health Center also will allow both SFSU and UCSF to expand their roles in educating future health care workers. The Center will offer crucial learning experience to students from a wide variety of health-and social services-related fields. Essentially, the clinic will be a real-world laboratory for SFSU and UCSF nursing, social services, physical therapy, mental health, and public administration students. By providing students with rea l patients to treat and real patient cases to monitor, the clinic will give students on-the-job training for every aspect of the health service careers they will eventually pursue.

Charlotte Ferretti, professor of Nursing at SFSU, is the primary force behind the initiation of outreach and case management services for the new Center. She says the new alliance will draw upon SFSU's long experience providing health services to Mission teenagers and adults, as well as UCSF's expertise in children's medicine.

The SFSU-run health clinic in Mission High provided students and adult clients with a range of comprehensive services, including mental health and medical services. The school clinic also served as a laboratory for SFSU's aspiring social workers, health educators, counselors, medical students, psychologists and nurses by providing them with the opportunity to work together to diagnose, treat, and counsel real patients.

The new Valencia Clinic will continue to serve both of these roles, and more importantly, will expand the range of services offered to Mission residents, according to Ferretti. The expansion into a larger facility increases the benefits to patient and student alike. Building upon the very successful collaborative model that Ferretti created at the high school clinic, the new Valencia Health Center will bring into the Mission district a coordinated array of health services. Ferretti brought a model o f collborative commmunity model of health care delivery from the Mission Health Center to the new Valencia Center. This model provides space for community providers offering complimentary health and mental health services not available at the Valencia Center. This effort reduces duplication of exiting services and is a more cost effective, coordinated method of delivering services to patients. It also offers other health agencies a space to expand services beyond their walls.

Valencia Center clients will be able to choose from among a broad range of services. Focusing on providing comprehensive care, patients will be able to receive mental health and medical services, as well as counseling, screening, and education services. Ferretti has commitments from several community providers that include mental health and alternative healing and expects the list of services to expand once the new space is available.

To meet demand for new services and an increase in clients, the center's new facility will be 2400 sq. ft. larger than either of the pre-existing centers operated by SFSU and UCSF.

The network of close relationships Ferretti has fostered with a variety of government agencies, private health care companies, and grant-making foundations, which the U.S. Bureau of Primary Health Care has recognized nationally as a "Model That Works," offer Valencia important financial resources to support its services. Contributors to the new center include funding from UCSF's School of Family Health Care Nursing, SFSU's Nursing program, the Federal Division of Nursing, and local Mckesson, Cowell and Bothin Foundations.

The new Valencia Health Center promises to become a vital and important part of the vibrant Mission community. Says Ferretti, "We are not just instituting an isolated University project, but working with the community to train health professionals and to address the needs of an underserved and ethnically diverse population."

San Francisco State University, a highly diverse community of 27,000 students and 3,500 faculty and staff, has served San Francisco and the Greater Bay Area for over a century. The new Valencia Health Center will carry that mission into the 21st century.

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