NorthShore Health Centers opened its first Gary clinic Tuesday, complete with confetti and “Welcome Gary” signs. The new facility at 2200 Grant St. brings family practice, dental, optical, behavioral, and women’s health care under one roof — expanding access in a city served by just one hospital and sparing patients 10- to 15-mile trips for routine checkups.
“I’m so excited; our community needs this,” said Gary resident Kiara Summers, a care coordinator in NorthShore’s family practice clinic. “A lot of people in our community have to find rides to get to Merrillville and Portage, and now they have an office here.”
Summers added that the new clinic can have an “amazing” impact on improving the community’s health issues, like diabetes and high blood pressure, by improving their accessibility to health care services and testing.
NorthShore’s arrival in Gary represents a deeper local investment to the community, as local organizations like Faith CDC, Brother’s Keeper shelter, and West Side Leadership Academy received donations from the health center. For many, it’s not just a financial investment in Gary’s infrastructure, it’s a commitment to its health as well.
Gary stands apart from NorthShore’s nine other locations across Lake County, particularly because of a higher need for comprehensive health services. The community needs for food access, health insurance, women’s and infant health, mental health, housing assistance, and substance abuse, were rated consistently higher in Gary than the rest of Lake County, according to a 2019 Community Health Need Assessment by Methodist Hospital, Gary’s only hospital. The assessment also reported that Gary has a slightly higher percentage of residents without health insurance and who are living with a disability compared to Lake County. From such, Gary is also considered a “medically underserved area” because it has too few care providers, high infant mortality, high poverty levels, and a high elderly population.
Transformed from a former doctor’s office, the new building features blue, green and white hallways filled with open doors for a diverse range of health care services; walls filled with lenses and glasses frames in the optometry clinic, a dental office with new, updated equipment, a skeleton-themed chiropractic service clinic, a kid-friendly pediatrics floor, women’s/OBGYN services, behavioral and mental health services, and a new, four-wheeled mobile clinic. In addition to physical health services, it also provides community resource information for housing; the federal supplemental nutrition program for women, infants and children, known as WIC; and health insurance enrollment.
Gabrielle Chandler, a women’s health nurse practitioner and certified nurse midwife, said that the new location, down the street from the expressway and accessible by bus, is set to help meet the demand in need she saw for accessibility to clinics when she worked at the Hammond and East Chicago’s North Shore locations.
“So when I was at the other locations, a lot of people had Gary addresses, but they weren’t coming to Gary because there was no health center here,” Chandler said. “So I think just the fact that it just shows that this population in this area needs this health center because they’re traveling to places a lot of the time. Some people don’t have cars. It’s too far to ride your bike or walk for some people. So it’s great just knowing that we’re close by for people.”
Meanwhile, Kiessa Hamilton, a mental health therapist at the new NorthShore location, who was previously working at the Lake Station site, says that the new opening will hopefully help prioritize and normalize mental health awareness.
“Hopefully, it will help to decrease the stigma,” she said. “Mind, body, soul — it is all connected. So, oftentimes, a physical issue can cause a mental health issue, or a mental health issue can cause a physical issue, and … it’s all combined, especially for Black women, and that can create stress.”
Chandler added that the services North Shore offers, including perinatal coordinators and pediatric navigators, can help improve sexual awareness and education, which she said are needed in the community, while the door-to-door offices under one roof can help women set up with other social and behavioral health services.
“There’s a ton of people in this community that need women’s health care, behavioral health, optical, dental, and it’s right here in the community, especially women’s health. … We have a lot of young, pregnant moms like teenagers, a lot of older population that just need access to routine women’s health care,” she said. “So having NorthShore here allows that.”
The Gary location is open from Monday to Thursday, 8 a.m to 6 p.m., and Friday from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.