Edgemont Community Clinic (Durham, N.C.)

Edgemont Community Clinic, a community-based health care facility in the low-income Edgemont section of Durham, N.C., functioned from 1968 to 1978. It was staffed by volunteers, chiefly members of the Student Health Action Committee and other health sciences students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University.

From the description of Edgemont Community Clinic records, 1968-1979 [manuscript]. WorldCat record id: 26507160

In October 1968, the Edgemont Community Clinic in Durham, North Carolina, opened. The clinic, designed to serve residents of the surrounding low-income neighborhood, was staffed chiefly by health science student volunteers from Duke University and students from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who were members of the Student Health Action Committee (SHAC). Holding sessions twice a week, by 1979, the Edgemont Community Clinic had logged over 2,000 patient visits per year. Clinic volunteers, overseen by licensed practitioners who also donated their time, administered general physical examinations, treated acute and chronic medical illnesses, and operated a free pharmacy and laboratory.

Throughout its history, the Edgemont Community Clinic never developed a secure financial base, despite support from Duke, UNC, and, for a series of educational programs in public health, from the United States Office of Economic Opportunity (O.E.O.). In an effort to strengthen the clinic's economic position, consolidation with the Lincoln Community Health Center, affiliated with Durham's Lincoln Hospital, was discussed in 1972. The inevitable loss of student control that such a merger would have involved defeated the measure.

The Edgemont Community Clinic survived until December 1978, when, because of worsening economic conditions compounded by a large population loss in the area and a vital need to repair the clinic's facilities, SHAC decided to move its operations to the adjacent East End community.

From the guide to the Edgemont Community Clinic Records, 1968-1979, (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.)