CalebG.ClarkHealthCenterto UndergoMulti-millionDollar Facelift

ByLoriHiga

resumé preparation, interview readiness, workforce etiquette and others.

* Senior Nutrition: This program provides low-cost, nutritious meals to seniors. Social events, health and nutritional guidance, entertainment, games, tai-chi, computer classes and biweekly food distribution are also offered. Open year-round, the program is active Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

* ZAP: With more than 70 participants, ZAP is a substance abuse intervention program aimed at teenagers and young adults. The program works toward harm reduction and anger management.

* Head Start Child Development: This program is designed to provide comprehensive services by meeting the unique needs of each child and family’s culture, ethnicity, language, ability, and disability. Program components include child development, advocacy, nutrition, family counseling, and health.

Sitting at the southernmost end of Wisconsin Street, next to Starr King Openspace, the Caleb G. Clark Potrero Hill Health Center is a lasting symbol of the ght for universal health care. For 33 years, the clinic has played a leading role in the health and well being of Potrero Hill residents, despite an unusually checkered and bloody past. Named after a social worker, Caleb “Gerry” Clark, who died young, the clinic was created to serve Potrero Terrace residents. A young Art Agnos – who served as San Francisco mayor in the late 1980s – was a Potrero Hill resident and legislative aide to then assemblyman and later Lieutenant Governor Leo McCarthy. He took two bullets in the chest as he left a planning meeting to create the clinic, just blocks from its present location.

Agnos survived the attack by the infamous Zebra killers, and the private, community-run clinic opened in 1976. A few years later, its rst medical director, Dr. Robert Ross, was shot and killed by a deranged elderly Russian-American patient, angry over treatment of a relative. Dr. Michael Drennan, from San Francisco General Hospital’s (SFGH) family practice residency program, took over as medical director. Drennan led the center for the next several decades, until additional responsibilities as head of the City’s community clinics compelled him to pass leadership to a fellow clinician-mentee. Two and a half years ago, Dr. Sushma Magnuson, a Kentucky native and Stanford University graduate who did her residency at SFGH’s Family Health Center, was appointed medical director. Magnuson is a clinic veteran, having worked there since the early 1990s.

The warm and even-tempered Magnuson explained that the renovation includes Americans with Disabilities Act-mandated changes to the lobby and bathrooms

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Founded in 1989, the Homeless Prenatal Program (HPP) is an award-winning family resource center located on the corner of 18th Street and Potrero Avenue. HPP works with low-income and homeless families to develop their strengthsandtrustintheircapacitytotransformtheirlives, helpingthemraisehealthychildren,becomebetterparents, and achieve fnancial self-suffciency. HPP’s goal is to end homelessnessandpovertysothatchildrenneverexperience the hardships of living on the streets as adults. Pictured in thephotographaboveisHPPfounderandexecutivedirector Martha Ryan with some of the staff. Photo courtesy of the HomelessPrenatalProject.