June 8, 2009

Walk into the Heartland Health Center - Lincoln Square on Lawrence Avenue a few blocks west of Western Avenue, and you'll see what looks like a normal, busy neighborhood doctor's office, with the possible exception of the art on the walls created by local residents. For the expectant mothers and young children who call the center their medical home, however, the new community health center is someplace very special.

Opened in February, Heartland Health Center - Lincoln Square is the second center operated by Heartland International Health Center (HIHC), along with two school-based health centers at Roosevelt and Senn high schools. These health centers are a place where patients receive comprehensive primary care, prenatal, women's health, pediatric, mental health and oral health services. The programs are designed with the needs of the uninsured, underinsured, immigrants, and refugees in mind, and services are offered regardless of ability to pay.

"We have a lot of focus on maternal and child health because we know that it's such a critical time," says Kimberly Tester, the grants manager at HIHC. "Establishing a medical home for a small child—getting them in for screenings, check-ups immunizations—is so much better for their long-term health."

With a midwife on staff and a view of pregnancy as an opportunity for empowerment, Heartland Health Center - Lincoln Square offers mothers a positive, supportive program, as well as prenatal case management that provides access to resources such as nutrition counseling and doula services. "Our approach is to support pregnancy and birth as a normal physiological process but also a life-changing event. Women benefit from a lot of support," says Rosemary Baldwin, the facility's midwife.

Heartland Health Center - Lincoln Square serves the Albany Park community, where about 40 percent of the residents are foreign born and more than half speak a language other than English at home. Baldwin, who speaks Spanish and Portuguese, says that she also benefits from the language line telephone system, which allows herself and the site's other medical staff to talk to patients in 35 different languages.

"It's very diverse here. We see recent Latino immigrants and we see highly educated women who lost their job and their health insurance. Shortly after we opened, a pregnant Iraqi woman came in who had only been in this country for a week. I just started seeing a woman from the Ivory Coast who was referred to me specifically," Baldwin says. "We all feel good that we're able to provide women from so many different backgrounds with affordable health care that they would have a hard time finding elsewhere."

Last year, nearly 14,000 individuals received care at Heartland Health Center - Lincoln Square, and Baldwin and Lincoln Square's two physicians are already seeing a rise from about 8-10 due dates in a typical month to 14 or 15 later this year. And since after the birth, most of the new moms enroll in a well-women program and sign their children up for pediatric services, Heartland Health Center's seven exam rooms promise to stay busy.

Learn more about Heartland International Health Centers. 

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