ATLANTA — Throughout the pandemic, 11Alive has stressed the need for medical care, particularly in communities of color.
There’s now a formidable answer in Atlanta’s West End community with a newly-opened and state-of-the-art health center, meeting medical needs in an area hard-hit economically with small businesses that have been shut down during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
From the outside, it's a sparkling, new three-story-tall, glass, and steel structure across Lee Street from the Morehouse School of Medicine's campus.
But inside, it is the new state-of-the-art Morehouse Healthcare Center, open for about a month, and already a magnet for people living in the West End community.
"They are happy to see this caliber of clinic was being opened in the West End and that we were offering the opportunity for everyone but in particular people of color,” said Dr. Michelle Nichols, the center's medical director.
Nichols said that one of the biggest draws to the new facility has been the COVID-19 vaccinations.
They started providing vaccines there on January 5. By this weekend, they will have already vaccinated more than 2,500 people, mostly residents of the West End community.
"We can definitely say that we are doing close to 70% of the people who have been coming to our site are from our community and also who are people of color," Nichols said.
But for the Morehouse Healthcare Center, the vaccinations are just the beginning.
The healthcare center has two full floors of diagnostic and high-tech equipment, including CT scanners. The center also boasts 42 examining rooms -- all equipped with teleconferencing equipment, especially valuable in reaching patients during the pandemic, both in the community and throughout the student body from the campuses of Morehouse College, Spelman College, and Clark Atlanta University.
For those living in the West End, the new center provides much-needed access to healthcare resources and facilities.
"You can walk there; you can get off the bus right there -- and I mean it's the best thing for us in this area,” said Clark Atlanta University professor Georgianne Thomas. Thomas received her COVID-19 vaccination at the healthcare center.
For Dr. Nichols and her team, the healthcare center in the West End took more than three years of planning and development and is now a source of considerable community pride.
“We are bringing them the same level of care as everywhere else, and we are coming to their community (the West End) and they don’t have to travel outside of their community," Dr. Nichols said. "The response has been excellent."
The Morehouse Healthcare Center currently has a waiting list of 8,000 West End and Fulton County residents waiting for their first COVID-19 vaccinations.
The good news is that Morehouse plans to restart giving those first vaccinations this weekend for those who had previously signed up.