Legacy 6th Annual Luncheon Postponed to October 7

Due to Hurricane Ike, the annual fundraising luncheon for Legacy Community Health Services was postponed from Tuesday, September 16 to Tuesday, October 7. The event will still be held from 11:30am-1:00pm at The Wortham Theater Center, Grand Foyer, 510 Preston in downtown Houston. For more information, please contact Alaina Schuster at aschuster@legacycommunityhealth.org.

For more information on the Legacy 6th Annual Luncheon, see the invitation.This event would not be possible without the generosity of the underwriters, sponsors and patrons. If you are unable to attend the event, but would still like to make a donation, you can simply printthe reply card and mail it to 2008 Luncheon, Legacy Community Health Services, 1116 Jackson Boulevard, Houston, TX 77006.

In wake of Hurricane Ike, Legacy Community Health Services

offers free primary healthcare services from mobile unit

Despite the loss of power, Legacy Community Health Services began offering free primary healthcare services from a mobile clinic in their parking lot at 215 Westheimer on Wednesday, September 17. The next day the mobile clinic moved to Legacy's location at 5602 Lyons Avenue in Houston's Fifth Ward after power was restored to the agency's Montrose location. The mobile clinic was made available by AmeriCares, a nonprofit organization based in Stamford, Connecticut.

 Legacy also provided assistance to storm survivors at the George R. Brown Convention Center on Saturday September 20. Terrie Kirk, manager of the Walgreens Pharmacy inside Legacy's 215 Westheimer clinic, filled about 50 prescriptions for approximately 25 people who were evacuees.Legacy also had a social worker available at the George R. Brown to help refer people to area social services.

 "Since so many clinics and healthcare facilities were closed after the storm, we wanted to be able to provide basic healthcare services to anyone in the community who needed help," says Katy Caldwell, Executive Director of Legacy Community Health Services. "We were concerned that some of our patients were going to run out of their medications, so we worked with Walgreens to make sure those were filled."

People began coming to the mobile clinic shortly after opening at 9:00am on Wednesday. One young man saw the mobile clinic as he walked by and asked if they could look at his foot. He had stepped on a nail during clean-up after the hurricane, so the Legacy medical staff cleaned the wound and gave him a tetanus shot.

"AmeriCares sent a mobile unit to the gulf coast following Katrina 3 years ago, so we were prepared to get our unit to Houston as soon as we heard hurricane Ike was approaching" says Karen Gottlieb, Executive Director for AmeriCares, Free Clinics, Inc. "We were connected to Legacy thru the Texas Association of Community Health Centers."

One woman noticed the mobile clinic out of a Houston Metro bus window as it passed by Legacy's Montrose location on the Wednesday after the storm. She got off at the next stop and walked back to the clinic. She had run out of her diabetes medication and needed a refill.

"I found out about the mobile clinic from the manager of the hotel where we were staying," said one mother of two teenage daughters who came to the Lyons location with her husband and the family dog. "I had run out of my asthma inhaler and was running low on my diabetes medication and my daughter had developed a sore throat following the storm. I don't know what we would have done without the mobile clinic."