expansion

White Bird Clinic Celebrates Fifty Years with Major Expansion

In 1969, a group of student activists and concerned practitioners founded White Bird Clinic to provide crisis services and free medical care to counter-culture youth in Eugene. Having grown continuously for fifty years, White Bird now has ten programs, 200 staff members, and more than 400 volunteers.

To celebrate our fiftieth, we’re growing our programs, demonstrating our commitment to serving low income, under-resourced community members. In response to burgeoning community need, White Bird is expanding medical, dental, crisis, and CAHOOTS services.

White Bird has a fifty-year track record of identifying, assessing, and responding to community need by leveraging our existing resources. We respond rapidly and effectively by building on existing, successful programs. Our expansion consists of:

  1. Opening a new medical walk-in clinic for individuals who are low-income and/or homeless and uninsured. The clinic, below the existing primary care clinic, will provide an alternative for patients experiencing an acute issue who lack health insurance, diverting a great number of emergency room visits.
  2. Enlarging the dental program to increase its capacity to serve patients by nearly 75%. White Bird is renovating the building at 1415 Pearl St. into a clinic that will also provide denture care for elderly patients and serve more children and families.
  3. Increasing access to crisis services by moving the crisis program to 990 W 7th Ave., adjacent to the Whitaker neighborhood. The new crisis center will house the 24/7 crisis line phone service as well as walk-in services in a trauma-informed space intended to minimize environmental triggers that may be re-traumatizing.
  4. Expanding the hours and geographic coverage of CAHOOTS mobile crisis services, which responded to over 21,000 calls in 2018, saving an estimated $6M in emergency medical services costs alone.

In order to serve more folks in need, White Bird is taking a risk by growing many different programs at once, and we’re turning to the community for support and partnership. Please call 541.342.8255 or donate to support the project of your choice.

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White Bird Building New Dental Clinic

Rendering courtesy of GMA Architects, an architecture and design firm in Eugene, Oregon

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The new clinic will increase the dental program’s capacity by seventy-five percent.

EUGENE, OREGON – White Bird is constructing an expanded dental clinic at 1415 Pearl St. that will offer urgent and preventative oral health care. The clinic is expected to open in October.

Too many unhoused and low-income community members need dental care that they cannot access. In response, White Bird has purchased the building at 1415 Pearl St. and is developing a dental clinic that increases capacity by 50 patients a week. The new facility will also allow White Bird to serve more elderly patients, children, and families.

Poor oral health presents significant challenges for many unhoused community members. According to Trillium Community Health Plan, many of their patients don’t ever see a dentist. The last two Lane County Community Health Improvement Plans identified access to affordable dental care as a major priority.

The dental clinic was founded in 1995 and has grown continuously since then. The twenty three year old facility is the limiting factor in White Bird’s ability to meet the increased community need for oral health care.

White Bird Clinic has a history of identifying, assessing, and responding to community need by leveraging existing resources. The dental expansion project is a central component of White Bird’s mission of service to low income, under-served community members. Once the new dental clinic is completed, the current clinic facility will be renovated to add a walk-in clinic to White Bird Medical. The new service will provide an alternative to hospital emergency room visits for low-income patients suffering an acute issue, offering compassionate and expert care and substantial cost savings for the community.

In addition to the dental clinic and walk-in medical clinic, White Bird is developing a new crisis center adjacent to the Whiteaker neighborhood as well as expanding CAHOOTS hours and geographic coverage. This is the first time in White Bird’s fifty year history that it has conducted two construction projects and multiple program expansions simultaneously, an indicator of the volume of unmet community need that the agency addresses.

In order to care for our most vulnerable community members, White Bird is taking a risk by growing many different programs at once, and we’re turning to the community for support and partnership. Please call 541.342.8255 or click here to donate to the project of your choice.

In 1969, a group of student activists and concerned practitioners came together to provide crisis services and free medical care for counter-culture youth in Eugene. Having grown continuously since then, today White Bird Clinic has 200 staff members and more than 400 volunteers each year.

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White Bird Breaks Ground on New Crisis Center

White Bird is developing an expanded Crisis facility adjacent to Eugene’s Whiteaker Neighborhood

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EUGENE, OREGON – White Bird Clinic’s Crisis program will offer expanded walk-in services as well as a telephone crisis line from a renovated facility at 990 W 7th Ave. Construction started April 29th and is expected to be completed in early July. The new location improves access to White Bird services for community members in the Whiteaker and West Eugene.

The new crisis center will house the crisis line phone service, which White Bird has operated 24/7/365 for 50 years, as well as walk-in services in a trauma-informed space. The choice of location is intended to expand White Bird’s presence in the Whiteaker neighborhood as well as its reach into west Eugene and western Lane County.

This safe space is intended to minimize environmental triggers that could be re-traumatizing. In 2018, the crisis team had 13,387 client encounters, 2,743 of them walk-in and 10,644 through the telephone crisis line. There were 4,237 contacts with clients in crisis and 2,976 contacts with clients seeking mental health information and referral. We served 2,006 unhoused clients and diverted 636 emergency room visits.

The crisis center construction is the first of many projects that will increase White Bird’s ability to care for Eugene’s most vulnerable community members. The agency has purchased two new buildings, is developing new dental and medical clinics, and is expanding CAHOOTS coverage and hours.

White Bird is taking a risk and growing to better serve, and is turning to the community for help with the financial resources needed to care for our most vulnerable community members. Contributions support White Bird’s mission and services for those in need. All donations are tax deductible.

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