Clinics Finances

A Van Nuys Boulevard charity called MEND, which stands for Meet Each Need with Dignity, will hold a "serv-a-thon" today to raise funds and provide residents in need with new shoes, mammograms, clothing, haircuts and other services. Serv-a-thon volunteers found sponsors who pledged to donate money to MEND, which will use the funds to purchase medication that is dispensed to low-income patients through the MEND health clinic.

People suffering from diabetes and hypertension will benefit because of a grant to the Venice Family Clinic from a drug company's charitable foundation, officials said. A $47,000 grant from the New York-based Pfizer Foundation will fund improvements to the health center's pharmacist-directed chronic care clinic, in which patients with diabetes and hypertension have regular visits with pharmacists who monitor their medications.

Venice Family Clinic has received a $38,000 grant from the California Primary Care Assn. for programs that serve low-income pregnant women in Venice, Mar Vista and Culver City. "We are very excited to be able to provide more vital prenatal services to pregnant women as a result of this funding," said Elizabeth Benson Forer, executive director of the clinic. The association also gave a $17,000 grant to the Westside Women's Health Clinic in Santa Monica.

The Hollywood Sunset Free Clinic will receive a $125,000 grant to help troubled youths remove tattoos, Gov. Pete Wilson announced Friday. "Enabling at-risk youths to remove visible tattoos is one way of encouraging them to correct their course and choose a positive, productive lifestyle," said Wilson in a statement, adding that 200 young people will be able to take advantage of the tattoo removal.

In Friday morning's sunshine, 90-year-old Fred Gilbert was busy outside the Laguna Beach Community Clinic, sweeping leaves and cigarette butts into a shovel and tossing the debris into a trash barrel. Gilbert typically would be fixing "doors that don't close and locks that don't work" but said he decided to switch gears. "I'm cleaning up because it looks messy," the Laguna Beach resident explained. "We have no one else to do it."

Despite the presence of 300 sometimes angry protesters, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday refused to bail out the San Fernando Valley's largest AIDS clinic, and instead chastised the foundation that runs the clinic for alleged fiscal mismanagement. The nonprofit AIDS Healthcare Foundation, one of the county's largest AIDS service providers, came to the supervisors seeking $1.2 million to keep its Sherman Oaks facility open.

Despite the presence of 300 sometimes angry protesters, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday refused to bail out the San Fernando Valley's largest AIDS clinic, and instead chastised the foundation that runs the clinic for alleged fiscal mismanagement. The nonprofit AIDS Healthcare Foundation, one of the county's largest providers for AIDS patients, came to the supervisors seeking $1.2 million to keep its Sherman Oaks facility open.

The AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which announced in July it would be closing the largest AIDS care clinic in the San Fernando Valley due to funding shortfalls, will remain open by entering into a partnership with Gottlieb Medical Group, headed by one of the nation's best-known AIDS experts. The two entities will formally announce today their plan to operate a joint facility under the name AHF Valley Healthcare Center/Gottlieb Medical Group.

Private hospital executives hurriedly hand-delivered bids Thursday to take over county medical clinics, saying it will be cheaper to lose money on the facilities than have hospital emergency rooms flooded with uninsured sick people when the clinics are closed. County officials said private hospitals and other care providers turned in dozens of proposals by a 4 p.m.

Citing a lack of financial support and a shortage of donors, the Gathering Place, the only AIDS drop-in center serving the primarily black and Latino South-Central population, closed last week. The center, at 3870 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., was something of an oasis for AIDS and HIV patients who also wrestled with poverty, homelessness, prison records and unemployment, Director Graciela Morales said. "How can you close an agency whose services are so needed?"