Free health clinics for low income county residents

Community Health Partners provides free medical, dental, and vision clinics for uninsured people in Washington and Oregon, and according to Wahkiakum County Health and Human Services Director Sue Cameron, they want to make sure their services reach Wahkiakum residents as well.

Kaiser Permanente has donated space at their location in Longview for the clinics, which are free for low income people.

“This is an organization that provides medical, dental and vision clinics,” Cameron said of CHP. “Doctors come in and volunteer their time.”

Not just the medical doctors. The also have volunteer dentists, optometrists, nurses, medical assistants, registration clerks, and interpreters.

Every Wednesday evening from 5-8 p.m., CHP accepts walk-ins. The only stipulation is that patients must be registered by 7:30 p.m.

On Thursdays, from 2-6 p.m., patients can see a doctor, but they must have an appointment.

They provide medical exams for urgent health issues, immunizations, testing and treatment for sexually transmitted infections, access to medication and prescription assistance, access to laboratory and imaging services, referrals, and more. They don’t prescribe opiates, do emergency, prenatal, or pregnancy care, or well adult and occupational health exams.

“St. John’s contributes pharmaceuticals, x-rays, everything,” Chris Holmes of Wahkiakum HHS said.

Dental clinics are offered four times a year.

“We don’t have any Medicaid based dental for anything anymore in Cathlamet,” Cameron said. “You can sign up for an appointment at one of these quarterly dental clinics and get anything done.”

Vision clinics are scheduled twice a year and are available to anyone 18 and older who doesn’t have health/vision insurance. The exam, and glasses if needed, are free.

“We’re hoping it will be a nice asset, but we’re not sure people will go all the way in,” Cameron said.” We’re trying to figure out how to use this to expand care for people in Wahkiakum County. How do we get people there?”

“If we hear a lot of people saying that they would like to take advantage of this but they can’t get back home, we can use that info as we make our applications for transit services, or perhaps we can adapt scheduling of our buses to meet community based demand on that,” Holmes said.

For more information or to make an appointment, call 360-442-4165. Or go to the Community Health Partners website, http://www.chpwa.org.