6
BREATHE IN—Dave Boaz, a third-
year med student at Duke, checks the
heart of Wyatt Richardson, a patient at
the Edgemont Community Clinic. (Staff
photo)
PHARMACY SECTION—Don Mc
Leod, left, and Roger Efird, both from
the UNC School of Pharmacy, discuss
medications to be given to a patient at
the clinic. (Staff photo)
THE CHECK-UP—Burry Richard
son gets a thorough check-up from
Barney Lewis, a Duke medical student
and volunteer worker at Edgemont.
(Staff photo)
Edgemont Community Clinic:
Take a community, a sniall com
munity, where many people need medi
cal care but for one reason or another
don't get it.
Add a group of concerned students
who want to extend medicine beyond
the confines of a university.
Mix in a few interested community
leaders, some space and a bit of money.
Put it all together and you have a
prescription for better health. That
prescription can be filled at the Edge
mont Community Clinic.
The clinic, organized in the summer
of 1968 by the Student Health Action
Committee of the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill, provides basic
medical care and referral service for the
nearly 5000 residents of Durham's Edge
mont community. Interested Duke
University students and physicians join
ed the program shortly after its incep-.
tion.
Open each Monday evening from
6 p.m. until all patients are seen, clinic
workers treat between 20 and 30 people
weekly at the long, narrow Angier Ave
nue clinic building.
About eight medical students, four
from Duke and four from UNC, man
the clinic each Monday. Six nursing
students, three from each school, and
medical technologists and students from
both Duke and Watts hospitals are also
on duty.
The medical team is supervised by
two licensed physicians, one a pedia
trician and one an internal medicine
specialist.
In addition to basic medical care, the
clinic now offers a dental screening and
dental health instruction service run by
students from the UNC School of Den
tistry under the preceptorship of licen
sed dentists.
Pharmacists and pharmacy students
from the UNC School of Pharmacy now
work to provide drugs to those patients
who require them, while social workers
from the UNC School of Social Work
have also joined the Edgemont endeavor.
Coordination between the clinic and
the Edgemont community is achieved
through a twelve-man Board of Direc
tors, most of whom are community
residents. The board makes all major
decisions concerning clinic activities.
Mrs. Inez Gooch, a health aide and
president of the clinic's board of direc
tors, said, "I think the clinic is one of
the most wonderful things that has
happened to Edgemont. It has worked
out real well."
Other residents agree. "People here
Duke, UNC Students,
Residents Cooperate
are excellent to the children and coming
to the clinic is so convenient," Mrs.
Christine Richardson, mother of seven,
said.
The program began when a group of
UNC students met with representatives
of the community to investigate the
health needs of the residents and to ex
plore p>ossibilities for cooperation be
tween students and community leaders
to meet some of these needs.
Surveys taken as a result of the
meetings showed that most of the resi
dents of Edgemont did not have a regu
lar doctor. They relied on out-patient
clinics and emergency rooms in the
city for health care.
The surveys also noted that many of
the Edgemont citizens did not seek
medical help when they needed it be
cause of expense, inaccessibility of med
ical facilities, inconvenient hours of
hospital clinics and/or the impersonal
and sometimes degrading manner in
which they were treated at hospital
clinics.
The first results of the student-com-
(continued on page ten)