16 Mar Taylor Street Primary Care Clinic Hosts Community Health Fair

On February 27th, 2020, Taylor Street Primary Care Clinic (TSPCC), affiliated with Nursing Practice Corporation (NPC) and the College of Nursing at Wayne State University, held a health fair at the Central Detroit Christian Community Development Corporation (CDCCDC) building to promote their new nurse-managed clinic, which opened on March 9th, 2020.

“Health is becoming one of the major issues in our urban communities. The health system is to the point of being overwhelmed,” said Lisa Johanon, the executive director of CDCCDC. “To be approached by Wayne State University (WSU) and suggested the opening of the Taylor Street Primacy Care Clinic was music to my ears because it will not only help the health system, but it will meet the needs of many of our community members.”

The new health center is located on the first floor of the CDCCDC building and will be predominantly staffed by family nurse practitioners.

The CDCCDC building is very active in providing daycare, Head Start, jobs, and so many other programs for this neighborhood. NPC knew this was going to be the perfect place to have their new health center as it’s already highly utilized and easily accessible to community members.

“We are serving as a primary care clinic for the Virginia Park community,” said G. Lita Smith, Taylor Street’s Interim Chief Nursing Officer. “We provide holistic care, so not only are we going to be taking care of patients’ current diseases or illnesses, but we also want to focus on health promotion and preventing illness through resources such as tobacco cessation, healthy diet and exercise, contraception, and sexually transmitted illness (STI) prevention.”

At the February 27th health fair, many different community organizations and groups put together informational tables to promote health-related services that will either be accessed through Taylor Street Primary Care Clinic or which TSPCC can refer patients to.

“The health fair is a good opportunity to try and reach out to people, especially those who don’t have regular opportunities to get the help that they need,” said Erwyn Tabasan, a third-year pharmacy student at WSU. “Our project was to help find information and resources that we could present to patients to obtain affordable medications. There are many different resources in Michigan, not just traditional places like CVS, Walgreens and Kroger. At times, medications can be obtained completely free.”

The new Warrior Pharmacy located on Anthony Wayne Drive is due to open in the next 2 months. They participated in the health fair and had a table promoting their new pharmacy as well as convenient services they will be providing for patients.

“We’ll be able to offer free prescription delivery so we can service our patients. We’re going to collaborate with Taylor Street Primary Care Clinic to help make sure we can provide overall care for each patient,” said Jessica Bitel, one of the Warrior Pharmacy’s general managers. “Coordinating driving and transportation is hard for some patients who don’t have vehicles themselves. We’re doing whatever we can to be a full-service pharmacy.”

Along with their free, personal delivery service for patients’ medications, Bitel also promoted a convenient prescription service called “compliance packaging.” This service allows patients’ medications to be sorted and organized into separate packages for each and every day so they know when to take which medications. It’s also convenient in terms of travel, as the patients can take the number of pre-packaged medications for days they will be away from home.

In addition to the informational tables, the AmeriCorps Community Training Program was also at the Health Fair. Their organization provides information and training to the general public in Wayne, Macomb, and Oakland county about overdose prevention and how they can use Narcan to save someone’s life.

“We have target areas in each county that are more at risk, so we’re trying to hold monthly trainings. We encourage community groups and clinics to contact us and schedule trainings, too,” said Gagan Kaur, an overdose rescue trainer.

These trainings teach participants how to recognize an opioid overdose, how to reverse an overdose with the Narcan nasal spray, and how to perform CPR if needed. Once the training is completed, all participants are given an Overdose Rescue Kit that includes Narcan.

Alongside the informational tables were many others whose goals were to promote their programs and other helpful information to the community, as well as promote the opening of the new Taylor Street Primary Care Clinic.

“I look forward to this being a great partnership to join hands for the sake of peoples’ help,” concluded Johanon.

If you live in the Virginia Park area or are interested in seeing this new clinic and learning more, be sure to pay a visit. The new clinic can be found at 1550 Taylor St. and can be contacted at (313) 486-5501. Be sure to visit their website to learn more about the services they offer: https://taylorstreetclinic.com/.