Lane Community College is working with several community partners including Allied Health to build a Federally Qualified Health Clinic (FQHC) on the Cottage Grove Campus. The clinic will be a fully functioning care facility and teaching facility for South Lane School District students and Lane Community College students.
The project started in 2017 when President Margaret Hamilton was approached by two representatives from Cottage Grove. They recognized Lane Community College’s highly successful nursing and dental programs and hoped to create a clinical site for hands-on student learning.
President Hamilton said, “They knew I had a healthcare background and thought I would understand the need for accessible, affordable health care, and dental care in rural Lane County.” President Hamilton and the LCC Board of Education has had two years of meetings to work on this concept, and with the help of various partners the ambitious project is becoming a reality.
Grant Matthews, the Associate Vice President for Career Technical Education and WorkForce Development started working on this project a couple years ago as the Dean for Health Professions. Matthews said, “High school students will be able to visit, considering the proximity to the school, and see what a clinic looks like and how it functions. They will also be able to use the site for job shadowing.”
The center itself can be a classroom for students to take dual credit health professions courses. They will be near the clinic while studying specific medical courses including medical terminology, anatomy and physiology, and other human biology courses.
The goal, according to Matthews, is to provide an opportunity to “partner with cooperative education and internship sites.” Partners are very interested in having students finish out their learning in the clinic. Students will be able to have hands-on experience in programs such as medical assisting, nursing, medical reception, and other medical programs. Since the clinic is a Federally Qualified Health Clinic it will be able to service most patients.
Matthews and the rest of the team hopes that the clinic will be able to open in Fall of 2023. Representative Peter DeFazio has committed $500,000 from community funding projects, part of a spending bill that is working its way through congress.
Matthews wanted to specify that this is a grassroots-led partnership that has brought a lot of partners in South Lane County together: South Lane School District, Lane County Public Health, South Lane County Mental Health, Peace Health and Be Your Best are some of the county partnerships working on this project.
“This will benefit the entire community and it will integrate education and community health,” Matthews says this will provide immediate health care for the community and also provide opportunities to ensure that they have a workforce that can maintain health for the community as well.”
