Stimulus money will pay for 2 local health clinics

Two local health clinics will share $6.6 million in federal stimulus grants to expand services.

Tampa Family Health Centers will receive $2.9 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to build an 18,000 square-foot facility on North Dale Mabry Highway next to University Community Hospital. Another $3.7 million will go to Suncoast Community Health Centers, which serves east and south Hillsborough County communities such as Ruskin, Dover and Plant City.

Tampa Family Health and Suncoast representatives could not be reached for comment today.

Officials of Tampa Family Health Centers were among representatives of more than 30 health centers nationwide invited to a White House ceremony with President Obama today.

The federal money for the Tampa center bolsters previous grants. A 15,000-square-foot health center at 22nd Street and Osborne Avenue is slated to open in 2010 with a portion of the $4 million construction paid with stimulus dollars. Earlier this year a $605,000 grant was awarded to help the nonprofit center hire family practice doctors, a nurse, medical assistants and clerical staff.

It is anticipated the new clinic on Dale Mabry, near the Egypt Lake and Leto neighborhoods, will generate at least 15 construction jobs and 22 health-related jobs. It will be built at the site of a former Saturn automobile dealership.

"We're pleased because these are local jobs," said U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor, D-Tampa. "Tampa Family Health Centers likes to hire from the neighborhoods where they are located."

Local health clinics fill in gaps in health care, Castor said, providing a lifeline for neighborhoods where residents are uninsured, under-insured or lack transportation to medical facilities.

Tampa Family Health Centers operates eight clinics, including an urgent-care facility in a former police substation at the Lee Davis Neighborhood Service Center on 22nd Street. The agency also has a mobile health van that visits shelters for homeless people, and a dental van that goes to schools and Head Start programs.

The Lee Davis site in East Tampa was unsuitable for expansion, prompting the nonprofit to buy land at 22nd and Osborne for the new facility.

Chief Executive Officer Charles Bottoms has estimated about 60 percent of the centers' clients are uninsured. The agency began as a 1984 grass-roots mission of medical graduate students to bring health care to the working poor and uninsured.