Lewis River Life Hope Pregnancy Care Center Plans to Convert to a Medical Facility and Expand Education Opportunities
Posted on April 17th, 2007A Director’s Report by Lori Anderson
Life Hope is going medical! We have been serving the communities in the Lewis River area for five years now and have studied the numbers and trends we see. 70% of our current client load is Caucasian and the rest are various minorities. Most of our clients are under-educated, un-insured, young, single, and unemployed. The local economies and peoples are struggling and more people need help. Our clients are usually on foot, unable to afford or find transportation and the nearest pregnancy medical help is 20 to 30 minutes away. 90% of our pregnant girls do not get critical 1st trimester prenatal care (if any prenatal care); sexually active people in our region need STD testing and medical help; the clientele we assist need more practical education help (L.H. clients have an average 9th grade education level. Our Hispanic clients have an even lower education level and many are illiterate in their own language as well as in English.) …
All of these factors were used to help us make the decision. The best way to help more is to convert to a medical facility, providing early pre-natal care, STD testing, ultrasounds, doppler, medical advise/help, etc. in addition to offering more educational and counseling services. (Doctor Patrick Marmion, from Legacy of Portland and Vancouver is working with us to establish a medical center similar to ones he started in Cincinatti called, “Healthy Beginnings”. At this point he is our expert OB-GYN labor and delivery doctor advising and directing us.)
So, Life Hope has made the commitment to convert to a medical facility and to expand the education program. We started the phases in January 2007 and look to complete the conversion by January 2008. We are leasing the extra space next door and are in the process of preparing it now. When complete, we will have an education wing to implement our new Improve Mom’s/families Practical Abilities with Computer Technology (IMPACT *see below) computer literacy program (along with more general education), and a medical wing to provide healthy starts for our clientele, their partners, and their babies.
By doing all this, we expect to see more than a 25% increase in pregnancy test clients; more than 50% increase in mothers at Life Hope receiving 1st trimester pre-natal care; a complete new clientele for STD testing and education; a measurable improvement in basic knowledge by our under-educated clientele, and a new clientele taking advantage of our new IMPACT computer literacy program.
For more information or to contact Lori about this and other Life Hope things, log on to www.LRLH.org.
*The IMPACT program is designed to help improve the lives of our clients by increasing their knowledge and abilities on practical levels while improving their computer skills. The goals will be to 1) Make computers, computer tutorials, and computer education and software available to all clients wishing to improve themselves and 2) Improve computer abilities in the lives of moms and their families that seek help from Life Hope. We expect this one program to help increase the literacy rates and the computer literacy rates of our clientele.
