Agape/Community Care: Background
Note: Agape/Community Care have worked in partnership only since fall 2000, so our histories are presented separately here. The present and future are covered in the section on la clinica.
Agape Clinic: The Agape Clinic began in 1983 when Barbara Stark Baxter, MD called the Dallas County Medical Society (DCMS) to ask about physician volunteer opportunities in Dallas. The director of DCMS had never had such an inquiry. He referred Dr. Baxter to Los Barrios Unidos, a clinic in the West Dallas Barrio. Unfortunately, administrators at the clinic feared that having a volunteer physician would skew their budget and cause them to lose federal funding. So instead, they put her on its board of directors. That's where she heard about the Agape Clinic. "A woman made a presentation for a clinic she wanted to start in East Dallas," Dr. Baxter says. And therein was her volunteer opportunity.
Soon she was shown a 12-foot
by 
13-foot
closet in the basement of Grace United Methodist Church with light bulbs hanging
from wires in the ceiling. This was her clinic. "I was fresh from residency,
so I bought a few things used at Parkland, like Quinidine," Dr. Baxter says.
"I basically ordered everything to use in a family practice outpatient clinic."
Word spread. Vaccines came in from the Dallas County Health Department, and
soon Dr. Baxter and her small staff were administering immunizations along
with seeing sick patients. Volunteers from the Grace congregation played (and
continue to play) a vital role in staffing and coordinating the clinic. Betty
Bux, Betty Lou Gary, Tom Perkins, Dale McEowen, Betsy Julian, and others have
invested many years of superb volunteer service in the Agape Clinic. Photo:
Barbara Baxter, MD, Charles Kemp, FNP, Steve Rodrigues, MD, and Murray Rice,
MD - Agape pharmacy, 2/2001.
The closet grew into a clinic, which was expanded and renovated with gifts from donors who recognized the value of services to the working poor. Until 2000, the clinic hummed along with 20 to 30 patients treated at the clinic each Saturday. Then, changes at the Dallas County Hospital District resulted in far more stringent registration procedures at Parkland, the county hospital. The number of patients seeking care at Agape and other such clinics increased significantly. In response to increased numbers of patients and to a request from Baylor Community Care, Agape and Community Care joined forces in fall 2000.
Baylor Community Care: In our earliest work in East Dallas (1981-86) we worked only with Cambodian refugees because they presented with the greatest health needs and problems of any population in the area. At that time we were working door-to-door in the community and initially had no physician services. Students conducted in in-depth community assessment and that document was used to obtain agreement from Temple Emanu-el for them to work with us to develop medical services. That partnership led to the East Dallas Health Coalition, which later became the East Dallas Health Center, Dallas' first community-oriented primary care (COPC) center.
Leaving the medical care
to medical people, we continued working in the streets. In 1991 we decided
to adopt the district health model and shift our focus to the community as
a whole rather than a specific population within the community. We took responsibility
for providing health care to a culturally diverse (primarily Asian refugee
and Hispanic) inner-city low-income community with significant needs/problems.
Rather than begin with another lengthy formal assessment (Is it really necessary
to again show that this or any other such community has unmet needs?), we
began working on one street to assist people in the community to obtain health
care and social services. We went door-to-door and every time we found a person
with an unmet health or related need, we stopped and figured out how to meet
the need. Through the process of assisting people with the problems they felt
were most pressing, we were able to develop a trusting and professional relationship
with the community; identify needs and problems at all levels of care/prevention/
promotion; develop a meaningful understanding of available community services,
and become a part of the community of solution
.
In the mid-1990s Parkland agreed to send a physician to work with us out of the East Dallas Police storefront facility. We thus had medical services, refugee screening through the Dallas County Health Department, and outreach through Baylor students. We began working with Church Health Ministries (CHM) in the late 1990s and through that relationship, added additional medical services. We moved to a small community church in 1999 and in the spring of 2000 separated from CHM. Community Care moved to Emanuel Lutheran Church for a few months and entered into a partnership with Agape in the fall of 2000. Picture: Nina at la clinica.