Sacramento Native American Health Center expands to meet medical need in south Sacramento

The Sacramento Native American Health Center has opened a multidisciplinary health care clinic near Luther Burbank High School in south Sacramento, an area of the capital region where there’s a shortage of primary care doctor offices.

“SNAHC is extremely invested in the South Sacramento community and its robust grassroots, nonprofit, and business organizations,” said Dr. Maureen Wimsatt, the chief program and development officer for the Native American health center. We like to say that SNAHC Florin Road is a place that the community built.”

This marks the first time in 16 years that SNAHC has established a full-service health center outside midtown Sacramento where it’s headquartered at 2020 J St. The midtown clinic underwent an expansion in 2015, tripling the number of medical exam rooms, doubling the number of dental chairs and adding optometry services.

Now, because of a $3 million investment by Sutter Health, SNAHC has been able to renovate a vacant auto dealership and turn it into a clinic that will provide not only medical care but also dental, behavioral health, and supportive services to both Native and non-Native patients. As many as 12,000 people can be served annually in the new Parkway facility at 3800 Florin Road, Wimsatt and other SNAHC leaders said.

“Financial contributions like those from Sutter Health exemplify best practices for private-public partnerships. Sutter Health has been responsive to the needs of our patients and community. They have fully supported the construction of this facility, including its teaching kitchen and community garden.”

In a speech at the facility’s opening, Kelly Brenk, director of external affairs for the Sutter Health Valley Area, said: “These critical services couldn’t come at a better time. Equitable access to care is incredibly important to a community’s overall health. In Sutter’s last community health needs assessment completed in 2022, the top three identified needs included access to behavioral health and substance abuse services and access to quality primary care services. Today is all about celebrating what the collective can do when a community is in need.”

The Sacramento Native American Health Center also worked with Sutter to open a school-based health center at Grant Union High School-West Campus, 1221 South Ave., this summer. SNAHC worked collaboratively with Twin Rivers Unified School District, the Neighborhood Wellness Foundation and Del Paso Heights community leaders as it planned this facility and brought it to fruition.

Staffed by nurses and doctors, such centers have been shown to help reduce devastating patterns of disparities in both health and education. This center uses the name of the Grant mascot, Pacers Take Space-Mind, and offers behavioral health, educational sessions and pantry essentials. Access to food often comes up as a significant health need in south Sacramento, Del Paso Heights and other medically underserved areas.

As a federally qualified health center, SNAHC receives federal funding to Americans who live in medically underserved areas, regardless of their ability to pay. FQHC’s use a sliding scale to determine the costs of their services.

Britta Guerrero, the chief executive officer for SNAHC, said that partnerships between hospital systems and FQHCs are essential in the creation of community-based solutions and can advance health equity by creating shared vision and values.

At the SNAHC Florin Road opening, Brenk held up the clinic as an example of what can happen when like-minded partners come together to help counteract the adversity that many people face today.

“It is our experience that local programs and clinics, operated by organizations that are immersed in a community’s culture, often are the most effective in meeting a specific and identified need,” she said..