Three years ago, Amber Banderas, 9, was hurting, underweight, and needing emergency care. She remembers riding in an ambulance and receiving shots.
This fall, perched on an examining table in the Children’s Hospital Colorado Child Health Clinic as her stepfather, Carlos Gonzales, stood by, Banderas regaled the medical staff with tales of her life in north metro Denver. She efficiently completes school homework to maximize afternoon time with four cats, playing the video game Roadblock — “huge for kids,” she explained — and hanging out in the garden where her mother grows pears, peaches, lemons, and tomatoes.
She was at the clinic recently for a flu shot – “as you keep reminding me,” she told a nurse with an eye roll – and welcomed the “special cold spray” when that moment of stinging arrived. Nurse Micki Mantz also listened to her heart and lungs. “Do you want a sticker?”
“Yeah.”
Banderas is one of the 13,000 children who last year made 33,000 visits to this clinic, tucked just west of roaring traffic on Interstate 225 in a reflective-glass building at 860 N. Potomac Circle in Aurora. That’s about one mile southeast of the larger Children’s Hospital Colorado along East Colfax Avenue, where doctors provide emergency acute care and surgeries. Parents with children flock to this clinic for primary care — and increasingly for food.
Eight full-time doctors examine about 16 kids a day. Along with eight nurses and two medical assistants, they provide comprehensive basic care in a tightly organized, brightly colored 32-room facility. They serve a mostly low-income clientele, with more than 85% of patients relying on Medicaid to meet health care needs.
The clinic is part of a long tradition. The Children’s Hospital began in 1897 as a summer tent camp in Denver’s City Park for sick babies.
This year’s been tough as federal government budget-cutters target Medicaid and food aid and the political rhetoric targeting immigrants has spread fear. Many of the children at the clinic come from families that speak Spanish, Amharic, and Somali – clinic staffers at the front desk help with translation. “We had some initial drop off” in the clientele, Dr. Lisa DeCamp said. “But this is a trusted space. Families know. If there’s more enforcement? People do say they are worried about that.”
Inside the clinic, she and Dr. Daniel Nicklas, the medical director, rode an elevator up to a food pantry they are expanding. Beyond medical care, clinic workers increasingly prioritize providing families with canned goods and fresh food – often a key factor for overall family health and morale if available at affordable prices.
The clinic forged a partnership with food growers at a 3,000-square-foot urban garden on the southeast side of the Children’s Hospital to obtain food.
At the garden that morning, supervisor Carly Zimmerman, was harvesting beets, carrots, eggplants, and turnips.
She feels the demand, she said. “The need is greater than what I can grow.”
At the clinic, parents and children can also see mental health counselors. Clinic staffers and legal volunteers help handle health-related bureaucratic paperwork — enrollment forms for Medicaid and guardianship for children.
Families often struggle to clear time off work to bring children here. Doctors offer telehealth visits, which account for about 10% of overall visits, Nicklas said. These work best for follow-up care on common matters such as treatment of attention-deficit disorders. But doctors and nurses prioritize face-to-face contact with children and encourage limits on screen time, especially for younger patients, he said.
“Kids don’t need to watch an educational video at 18 months. They need you to talk with them.”
Child Health Clinic
Address: 860 N. Potomac Circle, Aurora, CO 80011
Number of employees: 54
Annual budget: $5.5 million
Patients served last year: 13,000