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Enterprise Health Center will serve community After six years of work and dedication, the Enterprise Health Center located at 2047 Comstock Avenue in North Charleston (843-308-2400) will soon be serving residents of the Enterprise Community.  A grand opening ceremony for the center will be held at 10 a.m. today, Nov. 2 at the facility. In addition, the building housing the center will be dedicated and named the O. Roscoe Mitchell Building in memory of Mr. Mitchell. Mr. Mitchell, who served as a leader of the Union Heights Neighborhood Association and was one of the founders of the clinic,  said of the clinic before his death in October,  “We are in the business of prevention. If the people of my community have access to the services, I believe that they will use them and we will become healthier people.” The Enterprise Health Center is the result of hard work and dedication.  Members of MUSC’s staff, the cities of Charleston and North Charleston, Charleston County and residents of the Enterprise Community have committed long hours to making this clinic a reality.  The City of Charleston, through its Enterprise Community (EC) Initiative, provided the avenue by which a partnership was developed to make the dream of quality, accessible health care a reality for EC residents. The goal of the EC Program is to foster economic opportunity, revitalize neighborhoods and improve the delivery of health and human services. The need for the health center was further identified in discussions with residents of the EC. Residents identified five top priorities critical to improving health. Attention to hypertension and diabetes led the list.  Land was donated by the late Beulah Holmes. The City of Charleston provided the initial capital to build the facility. The City of North Charleston provided additional capital,  land and engineering services. The Medical University provided funds for completing the building project. Additional planning and operational funds were provided through a Medical University of South Carolina Healthy South Carolina Initiative grant. The Medical University will coordinate clinical care for the new facility. “Less than 50 percent of the people with chronic diseases in the Enterprise Community are getting the care they need,” said Carolyn Jenkins, Dr. P.H., director of the Enterprise/MUSC Neighborhood Health Program and associate professor of nursing at MUSC. “Another concern is people living on limited income.  Many of the citizens of the Enterprise Community have fought all their lives to make the community better, and now we want to help them with more community-oriented primary health care.”  And what was probably the most significant factor leading to the success of this project, according to Jenkins, is that the community has assessed its own needs, and worked in partnership with government, the academic medical center and other community health systems to fulfill these needs. The center will serve the primary health care needs of all ages and will focus on services determined by discussions with the community. These include: hypertension and diabetes management and education, healthy eating and lifestyle changes to prevent chronic diseases, community access to primary health care, and linkages to other resources to assist with needs. There will be an emphasis on  preventive health services.  “At the Enterprise Health Center, our goal is to help meet the health needs of the community,” said MUSC President Ray Greenberg, M.D., Ph.D., “We will approach these needs working as a team, bringing together  providers, students, and health care organizations.  As an educator, I am particularly interested in so-called  ‘service learning’, where the learning experience for students is combined with providing service to the community. It is my hope that the Enterprise Health Center will become a national model for service-learning.”  The center houses five exam rooms where patients will be seen for care, a classroom where residents of the Enterprise Community can come learn how to better care for themselves and learn the warning signs of chronic diseases and a procedure room where nurse practitioners, doctors and nurses will work side by side to improve the health of their patients. To register for care, perspective patients will need to bring an identification card, insurance card, social security number, and proof of address. If applying for reduced payment for their care, the perspective patient will need to bring a check stub from their current job or support check, or letter from the unemployment office if not currently employed.