August 4th-10th, Clinicas del Camino Real, Inc. will host events in honor of National Health Center Week (NHCW)!

Clinicas invites community members to join them for a Health Fair at Del Sol Park, in Oxnard, on Sunday August 4th from 10am-2pm. Clinicas will offer free health screenings including cholesterol, glucose, blood pressure, bone density, vision and more. The remainder of the week, August 5th-10th, the Ventura Community can visit any of Clinicas’ 15 Health Centers throughout the County, and participate in community classes being offered throughout the week. These events will be part of a national campaign to increase awareness of the ways health centers are providing affordable health care in communities and celebrate the ways that health centers are “Rooted in Communities”.

Clinicas is part of a nationwide network of locally-run health centers that serve more than 28 million people nationwide. They are on the front lines of national public health challenges – whether caring for veterans, providing mental health, or responding to natural disasters. They are also a lifeline in remote and underserved communities where the nearest doctor or hospital can be several miles away.

Highlights of health center accomplishments include:

• Reducing unnecessary hospitalizations and unnecessary visits to the emergency room;
• Treating patients for a fraction of the average cost of one emergency room visit;
• Serving more than one in six Medicaid beneficiaries for less than two percent of the national Medicaid budget;
• Lowering the cost of children’s primary care by approximately 35 percent;
• Serving over 355,000 veterans throughout the country.
   

This year’s NHCW 2019 will highlight how health centers are at the forefront of a nationwide shift in addressing social factors as an integral part of primary care, reaching beyond the walls of conventional medicine to address the factors that may cause sickness, such as lack of nutrition, mental illness, homelessness and substance use disorders. Community Health Centers’ success in managing chronic disease in medically vulnerable communities has helped reduce health care costs for American taxpayers.

Clinicas CEO Roberto S Juarez said, “Elected officials across this country are in the process of debating solutions for health care. Community Health Centers like Clinicas already address the most pressing concerns through their quality, innovative and cost-saving care. Clinicas is an American success story because we save lives and stimulate local economies. Clinicas is locally-run yet part of a national network that serves 1 in 12 Americans, or 28 million people. Health Centers save American tax payers $24 billion a year in health care costs by preventing and managing chronic diseases. At Clinicas we are not just healers, we look beyond medical charts and tackle the social determinates of health to address the factors that contribute to poor health such as lack of nutrition, stress, mental illness, poverty or illiteracy.”

Please join Clinicas in celebrating NHCW. To learn more about NHCW, and for the listing of events at Clinicas, please visit: www.clinicas.org