Editor’s note: – This article and an accompanying one on the Dungeness Valley Health and Wellness clinic complete a two-part series on free care opportunities on the North Olympic Peninsula.
FORKS — Sometimes during breast and cervical cancer screenings she helps conduct in the West End, Denise Brennan notices puzzled looks on the faces of relatives in waiting rooms.
“It’s like they’re saying, ‘What about us; where’s our health care?”‘ said Brennan, outreach director for Family Planning of Clallam County.
There are free health clinics in Port Angeles, Port Townsend and Sequim.
There is none in the region of the North Olympic Peninsula that has the highest poverty levels and the largest tribal and Latino populations.
There are tribal clinics in the West End, Brennan said, but you have to be a member of a tribe to get a free examination.
But there is help on the way for the West End’s poor.
Bogachiel Health Clinic, operated by Clallam County Public Health District No. 1, is the West End’s largest clinic and is taking steps that will enable it to offer more services, manager Dennis Smith said.
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