Ocean Park Health Center

Ocean Park Health Center — District Health Center No. 5 before it was renamed — serves the Sunset from 1351 24th Avenue, with a satellite clinic in the OMI district that screened patients and referred follow-up here. It is one of five sites the health department designated for sentinel surveillance, where screening criteria are deliberately held constant so that trends can be read over time: the department's sexually transmitted disease summaries track chlamydia positivity at this centre rising from 8.1 percent in 1996 to 18.7 percent in 1999, alongside City Clinic, Cole Street, Southeast and the Youth Guidance Center. Its accessibility upgrade is documented in an unusually procedural way. The Finance and Audits Committee considered transferring management of two projects — this centre's and the Silver Avenue Family Health Center's — from Public Works to the Mayor's Office of Community Development, specifically so that the work would be eligible for community development block grant funding and the city would avoid repaying $475,000 to the federal housing department; the papers put the centre's project budget at $817,908. The clinic has also been publicly defended: when cuts were proposed, speakers came before the Health Commission against the reduction of service here, among them a former public health nurse.