COURTESY OF ALOHA MEDICAL MISSION Volunteers, including the Sunrise and Sunset Rotary clubs of Honolulu and Farrington High School football players, recently helped renovate Corbett House at Palama Settlement. The site will house the Aloha Medical Mission's new free clinic.

Volunteers fuel
free Palama clinic

The center offers care for homeless
and has been an exercise
in island teamwork

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By Helen Altonn
haltonn@starbulletin.com

Question: What do high school football players, Rotary Club members, doctors, dentists, nurses and other citizens have in common?

Answer: The Aloha Medical Mission's new free clinic at Palama Settlement, 810 N. Vineyard Blvd.

The formal opening and blessing will be at 5 p.m. Tuesday with U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye invited as guest of honor, but the doors were opened to patients May 28.

Dr. Ramon Sy, Aloha Medical Mission president, and Dr. Jorge Camara, vice president, praised volunteers Lynn Watanabe and Colleen Minami for spearheading efforts to establish the new clinic.

The nonprofit mission, which takes volunteer medical teams to care for people in impoverished and remote areas of the Pacific and Southeast Asia, opened a Honolulu clinic in 1995 at the Institute for Human Services.

Initially, it served the homeless but expanded to meet needs of the growing immigrant and medically uninsured population, requiring a bigger space.

Palama Settlement offered Corbett House for $500 a month for 20 years, but it needed a total renovation, Watanabe said.

Group Builders offered the mission a good deal and many other groups and individuals voluntarily joined the project, she said.

Among them were Farrington High School's football players, who helped lay a concrete slab in the back yard, and the Sunrise and Sunset Rotary Clubs of Honolulu, which helped to tear out old flooring and paint and move in supplies.

The clinic, open from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, also runs on volunteers.

Camara said the clinic offers "a great opportunity for physicians who have always wanted to join our mission, yet don't have an opportunity to travel overseas, to help our needy people right here."

About 50 doctors, 45 nurses and eight dentists work there at least once a month, Watanabe said. The Hawaii Dental Association also is assisting with Dental Samaritans, drawn from HDA members.

"The rest are lay people like me who do anything," Watanabe said, noting a lot of paperwork, computer work and scheduling of volunteers is required. Patient records must be filed and maintained for seven years, she said.

Three part-time staff members, a manager, nurse and dental technician, are all volunteers. Minami, a registered nurse, is clinic administrator and Watanabe is Aloha Medical Mission vice president for community relations. Both are board members.

At IHS, the clinic was treating 2,500 to 3,000 patients a year.

"With the new clinic," Sy said, "someone will always have a place to go for limited medical and dental care."

Services include school physical examinations and immunizations, pre-job physical exams, tuberculin skin tests, care for simple acute infections and basic dental procedures.

About $450,000 was raised in grants and donations to transform Corbett House into a clinic and start the operation, which costs about $75,000 a year, Watanabe said. Donors included the Harry & Jeanette Weinberg Foundation, the HMSA Foundation, Strong Foundation, Hawaii Community Foundation, Hawaii Dental Service Foundation and the Sunrise Rotary. The state Immigrant Health Initiative also provided some funds.