Transitions Clinic
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Launched in January 2006, Transitions Clinic is a unique, community-based, patient-centered program that strives to meet the medical and social needs of the post-release prison population. The clinic provides primary care health services, refills essential medications, and offers onsite social work, substance abuse counseling, psychiatry, and laboratory services. Transitions Clinic staff reach out personally to parolees primarily through mandatory weekly Parole and Community Team (PACT) meetings and community partners.
In December 2006, Transitions Clinic was awarded grants from San Francisco Foundation and Catholic Healthcare West to hire a community health worker to provide support, health education, patient follow up and case management for a growing patient population. Ronald Sanders was hired to be the clinic’s new community health worker. Ronald’s experience working with patients who have drug and alcohol addiction at the Bay Area Service Network (BASN) and his knowledge of the prison system will make him a powerful advocate for patients. Beginning in April 2007, he has been working on improving our clinic’s first time show rates and making sure that our patients are better connected to resources in the community.
Future Plans
In the upcoming year the Clinic will embark on two exciting new projects. With funding from The California Endowment, Transitions Clinic is teaming up with City College of San Francisco and Legal Services for Prisoners with Children to start the Post Release Wellness Project (PRWP). The PRWP will collaborate on the creation of a certificate program at City College to train community health workers in the care of people with a history of incarceration. Additionally, a community advisory board made up of people with a history of incarceration will convene to conduct focus groups in prison and in the community to better tailor the activities of Transitions Clinic.
The Clinic has also obtained funding from the California Policy Research Center to evaluate the clinic—specifically to see whether patients that remain in care at Transitions Clinic spend more time in primary care, less time in the emergency department, and less time in prison or jail. As this clinic is one of the first of its kind in the nation, an evaluation of its efficacy will be important as other counties, both those in the Bay area and around the country, seek to replicate this clinic.
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