The Agape Clinic
Baylor Community Care
Agape in the News
Clinic Location and Hours
The Agape Clinic began in 1983 when Barbara Stark Baxter, MD called the Dallas County Medical Society (DCMS) to ask about physician volunteer opportunities in Dallas. The director of DCMS had never had such an inquiry. He referred Dr. Baxter to Los Barrios Unidos, a clinic in the West Dallas Barrio. Unfortunately, administrators at the clinic feared that having a volunteer physician would skew their budget and cause them to lose federal funding. So instead, they put her on its board of directors. That's where she heard about the Agape Clinic. "[Betty Lou Gary] made a presentation for a clinic she wanted to start in East Dallas," Dr. Baxter says. And therein was her volunteer opportunity.
Soon she was shown a 12-foot by 13-foot closet in the basement of Grace United Methodist Church with light bulbs hanging from wires in the ceiling. This was her clinic. "I was fresh from residency, so I bought a few things used at Parkland, like Quinidine," Dr. Baxter says. "I basically ordered everything to use in a family practice outpatient clinic." Word spread. Vaccines came in from the Dallas County Health Department, and soon Dr. Baxter and her small staff were administering immunizations along with seeing sick patients. Volunteers from the Grace congregation played a vital role in staffing and coordinating the clinic and continue to serve on the board of directors.
The closet grew into a clinic, which was expanded and renovated with gifts from donors who recognized the value of services to the working poor. Until 2000, the clinic hummed along with 20 to 30 patients treated at the clinic each Saturday. Then, changes at the Dallas County Hospital District resulted in far more stringent registration procedures at Parkland, the county hospital. The number of patients seeking care at Agape and other such clinics increased significantly. In response to increased numbers of patients and to a request from Baylor Community Care, Agape and Community Care joined forces in Fall 2000.
Baylor Community Care grew out of a series of discussions among students, faculty, and people in the East Dallas community. We were encouraged to participate in the life of the community and decided to take responsibility for the health of part of East Dallas (bounded by Live Oak, Fitzhugh, Ross, and Haskell).
In our earliest work in East Dallas (1981-86) we worked only with Cambodian refugees because they presented with the greatest health needs and problems of any population in the area. Working door-to-door in the community without physician services, students conducted an in-depth community assessment and that document was used to obtain agreement from Temple Emanu-el for them to work with us to develop medical services. That partnership led to the East Dallas Health Coalition, which later became the East Dallas Health Center, Dallas' first community-oriented primary care (COPC) center.
In 1991 we decided to adopt the district health model and shift our focus to the community as a whole rather than a specific population within the community. We took responsibility for providing health care to a culturally diverse (primarily Asian refugee and Hispanic) inner-city, low-income community with significant needs/problems. Rather than begin with another lengthy formal assessment, we began working on one street to assist people in the community to obtain health care and social services.
We (one clinical group of eight students and a faculty member) started at 1415 Annex Street and worked our way door-to-door to 1614 Annex. Those two blocks took a year, we encountered many people and many problems. Every time we found a person with an unmet health or related need, we stopped and figured out how to meet the need. Through the process of assisting people with the problems they felt were most pressing, we were able to develop a trusting and professional relationship with the community; identify needs and problems at all levels of care/prevention/ promotion; develop a meaningful understanding of available community services, and become a part of the community of solution.
While maintaining our presence on Annex, we expanded to Carroll Street and then up and down San Jacinto Street. Because we had an ongoing, demonstrable impact on the community's health, other people began working with us. In the mid-1990s Parkland agreed to send a physician to work with us out of the East Dallas Police storefront facility. We thus had medical services, refugee screening through the Dallas County Health Department, and outreach through Baylor students. We initiated relationships with churches and a seminary to develop a parish health program component.
We began working with Church Health Ministries (CHM) in the late 1990s and through that relationship, added additional medical services. We moved to a small community church in 1999 and in the spring of 2000 separated from CHM. Community Care moved to Emanuel Lutheran Church for a few months and entered into a partnership with Agape in the Fall of 2000.
Lakewood Advocate - 'La Clinica' (December 2004) (local PDF version of article here)
Baylor Magazine - Do Not Grow Weary in Doing Good (February 2005) (local PDF version of article here)
The Baptist Standard - A Healing Touch (November 2005) (local PDF version of article here)
The Agape Clinic is located in the basement of Grace United Methodist Church, 4105 Junius Street (at Haskell), Dallas, TX 75246. See this location on a Google Map. It is open:
- Wednesday: 8:00 - 12:00 (September - May)
- Thursday: 7:30 - 4:00
- Friday: 7:30 - 12:00
- Saturday: 8:00 - 12:00 (immunizations available)