Detroit

The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com

Fall 2014- 7F


THE STATEMENT
Cass Clinic brings health
care to local community

Beating Blight

Wayne State
medical students
gain experience
while giving back
By PAIGE PEARCY
Daily Staff Reporter
MARCH 13, 2014 - On a
snowy Saturday at 8:45 a.m.,
Willie Oliver made the second
trip of his life to the Cass Com-
munity Social Services building.
He stood outside, underneath the
red awning, in the line of people
waiting to get inside when the
doors opened at 9 a.m. Oliver
has high blood pressure and like
many of the people waiting in
line with him, he couldn't afford
a trip to the doctor's office.
"We see a lot of high blood
pressure and diabetes," said Julie
Weber, a second year Wayne
State Medical School student.
"What's really great about this
clinic is that the people who we
see who have those conditions
come back every month and we
give them free meds and it's
awesome because we're actually
managing their conditions."

we have a doctor here, he just late 1990s, the Clinic was given
doesn't necessarily come out to that space to use every Saturday
see patients," she added, morning.
TwoweeksbeforeOlivercame "A lot of the people we see,
to Cassafor the first time. While he we're their primary caregiver,"
was there for a foot injury he was Costea said. "We've been able to,
informed of his high blood pres- I think, manage a number of peo-
sure and became concerned. He ple and hopefully keep them from
came back to the clinic in order to going to the emergency room for
continue monitoring it. routine care."
"I'm kind of in the shelter, so In 1990, shortly before the
I got dropped off (in a van) and clinic relocated across the
I just came over so I could see street, the Wayne State Univer-
somebody and to have my blood sity School of Medicine formed
pressure checked," Oliver said. a partnership with Cass. Now six
"Just last week I turned a year Wayne State School of Medicine
older, the older you get the more students, each of whom serves as
you have to watch out for your a coordinator of various depart-
health." ments, including finance, dona-
tions and scheduling, run the
A history ofhealing Clinic. Costea still serves as the
overseeing physician.
Cass Clinic was founded in Each Saturday, medical and
the late 1970s by a collaborative undergraduate student volun-
effort between Edwin Rowe, a teers populate square tables in
reverend at Cass United Method- the largest room of the social ser-
ist Church, and George Costea, vicesbuilding. Workingingroups
a family practice doctor. Costea of two to four, the student volun-
rotated at the Haight Ashbury teers serve the patients who make
Clinic in San Francisco - which up the extended line outside.
was one of the first free clinics in They evaluate each patient for
the country - and in 1975, he felt symptoms and take note of their
inspired to start a similar clinic in concerns, and then present their
Detroit where he grew up. cases to Costea, who sits in the
"We felt we gave people an back room where the prescription
medications are held and deter-
mines what patients need.
"We do all the assessments
(in the main room), we take
their blood pressure and lis-
ten to their heart and lungs and
then we go back and do a pre-
sentation for the doctor, which
is good for us because we learn
how to present in real-time set-
ting and the doctor is hearing all
about the patient, so he can give
an informed decision about how
to treat the patient," Weber said.
"A lot of the time since he's been
here so long he has a sense of how
people should be treated even if
he hasn't seen them but a lot of
them he recognizes and he knows
how to treat and he can adjust the
regimens as needed."
Kathryn Rice, the clinic's vol-
unteer resources coordinator,
said Cass is unique in that the
students have significant interac-
tions with the patients that they
don't often get in other clinic set-
tings.
"You get to see firsthand what
you're doing," Rice said. "It's not
that you're just giving them medi-
cation and you're walking away;
you're actually getting their his-
tory, you're talking with them
you're getting to know them and
it builds rapport with the com-
munity, and it gives you a sense of
,j what you can do as a doctor."

By SAM GRINGLAS
Daily News Editor
JULY 2, 2014, DETROIT -
Like most of the places on Lyn-
don Street, Judy Sackett's house
is small, white and boxy. Her
lawn is cut, the yard filled with
flowering shrubs. A wooden
bench sits under a large tree.
But the story of Lyndon Street
is complicated. The house next
door is vacant. Plenty of struc-
tures are visibly marked by
blight -their roofs caved in,
shells scarred by fire. A block
over sits a tract of empty land so
vast that a family uses it to ride
their off-terrain vehicles. Some
of the residents mow the grass
in the vacant lots near their
homes just to keep their stretch
of street looking okay.
Detroit's blight problem is no
secret. But for years, community
organizations and city adminis-
trations have struggled to find
an adequate approach to tackle
an issue spiraling so quickly out
of control - until last winter,
when an army of surveyors from
Detroit's newly convened Blight
Removal Task Force set out to
catalog the condition of every
single land parcel.
What they found is sure to
directly impact the city's efforts
to beat blight. But on top of that,
the report is also likely to color
the ways in which neighborhood
alliances, preservation net-
works, urban planners and resi-
dents think about their blocks
and the futures they'll have
there.
Jamil Abdul Hakim's eldest
daughter relaxes in a communi-
ty-built park on Lyndon Street.
Behind her sit consecutive
vacant lots, cleared of blighted
houses, that her family use for
all-terrain vehicles.
Blank Canvas
Last fall, the Obama Admin-


ALLISON FARRAND/Daily
UPPER: An abandoned home sits next to a vacant lot in the Jefferson-Mack
neighborhood of Detroit. LOWER: A scene from Dr. Suess's The Loraxis
painted on the side of an abandoned school in the Brightmoor neighborhood.

compared blight to a malignant
tumor "because, like cancer,
unless you remove the entire
tumor, blight grows back."
In Detroit's Jefferson-Mack
neighborhood many blighted
homes are being demolished
while others are boarded up
in hopes of deterring criminal
activity..
Sean Jackson is the 25-year-
old Quicken Loans associate
Gilbert appointed to lead the
Motor City Mapping Project, the
report's mapping component.
Jackson said dealing with blight
is in many ways a precursor to
improving most everything else
in the city, including education,
crime, unemployment and pub-
lic health. Blight also affects the

to date. The data is already avail-
able online. Motor City Mapping
is in the process of launching an
application that allows residents
to update the status of sites on
their street - a process they call
"blexting."
It's likely this kind of project
couldn'thave happened tenyears
ago. Technology, in part, has
made the effort feasible. But even
with data, decisions about where
and when to target demolitions
can be somewhat subjective.
For that reason, Jackson
noted the Task Force is engag-
ing residents with more block-
based knowledge, but said razing
blighted structures isn't likely to
be unpopular.
"I can't imaoine anvbodv is

Ill

Insurance not accepted here
Perhaps the most impressive
part of this clinic is not its long
standing history or that it's stu-
dent-run, but rather that in an era
of rising healthcare costs, Cass
functions at virtually no cost -
all of the students and physicians
are volunteers and most of the
medications are donated.
Neha Meta, a first year Wayne
State University School of Medi-
cine student and the finance
coordinator for the clinic, esti-
mated that each year they receive
about $20,000 in grant money,
which she said they mainly use to
purchase medications, like insu-
lin, which they have not been able
to get through donations.
Rice said each Saturday the
clinic serves 30 to 40 patients
while it's open from 9 a.m. to
noon. According to Consumer
Reports, an average retail clin-
ic - which Consumer Reports
deems as the lowest priced clinic
compared to Urgent Care centers
and Emergency Rooms - charges
on average from $55 to $75 per
visit, thus, doing the simple math,
that means a clinic like Cass,
were they collecting fees for their
services, would receive at least
$85,800 each year.
As a result, the clinic some-
times can't provide necessary
medications for patients due to
the high cost of a drug and lack
of donations, so the students and
Costea have to make recommen-
dations for the patient to go else-
where.
"The hardest part is when you
can't help someone," Rice said.
"You want to so badly because
you know that you need it but you
don't always have the resources
to help them."

Patients receive free medical attention from Wayne State medical students at
the Cass Clinic in downtown Detroit.

Oliver was waiting outside
because every Saturday morning
at 9 a.m., the Cass Community
Social Services building, located
in the Cass corridor in downtown
Detroit, becomes Cass Clinic - a
free clinic run by Wayne State
School of Medicine students.
"Especially in your first and
second year (of medical school)
you don't have any exposure to
the clinic, you don't ever really
get to see patients," Weber, who
is one of the six student coordi-
nators of the clinic, said. "That's
why I love coming here, because
it's really just students treating
patients and you do your best,"
"(The patients) know they're
seeing students, but it's better
than nothing because they don't
really have access to doctors and

option," Costea said. "The Detroit
Medical Center isn't very far
away but people felt intimidated
by the medical center, just the
name itself, and we wanted to
give them someplace they'd feel
comfortable, another option, and
where we don't even ask about
whether they do or don't have
insurance.
"We treat everybody here," he
said of the Clinic. "We try to give
them as much as possible from
what we have here."
Initially, the Clinic was given
a very small space within the
church - which still stands
across the street from the social
services building. But with the
Clinic's increasing popularity,
once the church purchased the
social services building in the

ALLISON FARRAND/Daily
Jamil Abdul Hakim's eldest daughter sits in a community-built park on Lyndon Street in the Brightmoor neighborhood,
Behind her sit consecutive vacant lots, cleared of blighted houses, used by her family for all-terrain vehicles.

istration helped establish
task force charged with de
ing a plan to remove every
blighted parcel out of De
380,000 parcels of land, to
142 square miles.
In May, the Detroit
Removal Task Force releE
prolific report not only<
ing the scope of the city's
problem, but also laying ou
of policy recommen-
dations designed
to both keep blight
from spreading and
tear down the hous-
es that couldn't be
saved. The cost of
addressing blight on
vacant lots, residen-
tial structures and
small commercial
buildings alone is expec
top $850 million.
of the parcels in that1
40,077 structures and
vacant lots require imm
attention in the form of
demolition or lot clea
Another 38,429 structure
play indicators of future1
The report estimates 80
percent of those building
eventually face the wr
ball. All together, about 2
cent of the city's land p
have structures destine
demolition.
When the plan was pre
to the public and city of
last month, Task Force co
Dan Gilbert, the chairm
mortgage giant Quicken

a local city's image, especially in the goingi
velop- eyes of potential investors and house,'
single residents. are no
troit's "Having this image of being we're t
taling the blight porn city when people down,
come here and they want to go aged, t
Blight to the Packard Plant and see the livingi
ased a abandoned train station, that's windov
detail- notwhatyou wantyour city to be collaps
blight known for," he said. "You want not sot
at a set your city to be known for its tech to you.
"Like cancer, unless you
remove the entire tumor,
blight grows back."
ted to community or its vibrant down- should
town or its arts and culture - not once it
group, for having a ton of abandoned The
6,135 buildings in it." policie
ediate Last winter, the Motor City future
either Mapping Project, collaborated tax ref
n up. with Loveland Technologies, a on scr
es dis- local startup, and non-profitData ing, bu
blight. Driven Detroit to hire 150 resi- the cit
to 90 dents to survey every property in drivet
;s will the city over a two-month period. "WI
ecking Wielding tablets, the teams took tunity-
2 per- photographs of each property, canvas
parcels assessed its condition and logged to buil
d for the results in the project's data- believe
base. you ge
sented Organizers also tapped into we'reg
fficials city and county records - 24
-chair existing datasets in all - to com- Read
aan of pile the most comprehensive and MOR
Loans, complete look at the city's land

to argue taking down a
" he said. "These houses
t in good shape. When
alking about taking them
they're already fire-dam-
hey haven't had anybody
in them for ten years, the
ws are broken, the porch is
ed, the roof is failing. It's
mething you'd want next
For the Task
Force, annihilating
blighted properties
is the name of the
game. Organizers
hope to eliminate
themajorityofblight
over aboutfive years,
but the report pur-
posefully stops short
of considering what
be done with the land
's been cleared.
report suggests several
s intended to fend off
blight, such as property
forms and cracking down
apping and illegal dump-
it Jackson said it's best if
y and other organizations
he vision from there.
hen you create this oppor-
- when you create a blank
, people are going to want
d there," he said. "I truly
that. We're going to help
t rid of the blight, then
going to pass it off."
id the rest oftthis story, and
e, at MichiganDaily.com