Perched against the mountains on the northern tip of Los Angeles, Sun Valley is used to being ignored by City Hall.
The gritty community of old landfills, power plants, auto-body shops, junkyards and industrial sprawl was home to massive quarries that produced the sand and gravel that helped build modern Los Angeles. But residents have long complained that the city has given them little in return -- except for trash hauled into the local landfill.
On Wednesday, however, many residents said officials finally provided something they need: the Sun Valley Health Clinic on the grounds of a local middle school.
By placing a full-service community clinic on a school campus, officials hope to create a convenient location for families to get regular health services. The middle school happened to have land available, but officials see the model as a prototype that, if successful, could be replicated elsewhere.
City and county leaders, as well as community activists, hailed the facility as a turning point for the district of 84,000 mostly working-class Latino residents, where one-third of the population is uninsured and most children come from families living below the poverty level.
According to Los Angeles County officials, residents in Sun Valley and adjoining northeastern San Fernando Valley cities register high rates of asthma, obesity and diabetes. A prime goal of the clinic is to provide basic healthcare services to residents who now rarely see a doctor. The emphasis will be on preventive care.
The 10,000-square-foot Spanish Mission-style clinic is on the campus of Sun Valley Middle School.
The project took more than six years to become a reality. The Los Angeles Unified School District supplied the land, the county supplied $7.5 million for construction and the private Northeast Valley Health Corp. and the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine agreed to provide healthcare services for free or at reduced cost.
Officials said the clinic could not have been built without this team approach, in part because land for new health facilities is usually very difficult to find.
Backers said they hoped the clinic would help Sun Valley residents get the kind of healthcare available in more affluent areas.
"Some of these things a family physician in West L.A. or Pasadena might be able to identify don't get dealt with in this community, and many don't know it would be easily treatable or managed, and by the time they realize something is wrong, it becomes a more complicated problem than it might have been," said Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who proposed setting up a clinic in Sun Valley.
